Kevin Devine Follow

All that music in your mouth
Rivers rushing at your teeth
Cresting waves through wading valleys
Flooded language tributaries
Collecting cover over me
Your tensing jaw and corkscrew eyelids
As if you couldn't bear to see
All that water pouring from you
Collecting clouds inside the ballroom
Over people who don't know you

But darling I do

You trance yourself back from the city
And I'm moving to your feet
Your foot falls tentative and muffled
Automatic listless shuffle
Sidewalk scatterbrain cry uncle
Paint yourself back in your corner
And look for her on your TV
It's Friday night and I am hungry
For a hand, a mouth, a body
A love I wouldn't have to carry
A stitch in my mouth, that I'm untying now
A concrete canal, and a bomb bordertown
An echo in the rafters reminding you there was a sound

But you killed her in waves
So she stayed as steam
To hiss at you now

You killed her in waves
But that's not today
So you breathe through your mouth
Try to calm yourself down
And keep what you found
And Shout it out loud
She can harbor in hurt, or dissolve to dirt
Some prayer in your mouth
Or she might stay as steam
Soak into the beam
Let you figure her out