Bird singing lonesome on the hill.
My heart is empty but one silent tear fills…
Can you look me in the eye?
I’ve waited so long, so long just to say goodbye.
You didn’t really know where I come from
Could never go where I’ve been.
I spent many nights wondering whether love was the original sin.
So when it all blew up, all the way to hell and back,
Leaving bloody ashes and fading embers on the bar,
My world fell in on itself like a dying star.
Once blazing and brilliant, now wasted and spent,
Sucking everything into its dying heart.
Black as the night, no light, no sound, just an everyday black hole.
But there’s an explosion waiting to happen –
The prodigal daughter wants to come home again,
Or at least to the place home used to be.
Only now there’s no song to sing, only a piano with keys and broken strings.
There’s no teacher to teach, no lessons to learn.
But you can’t look me in the eye
Because I’ve waited so long just to say goodbye.
I guess we were saying goodbye from the moment we said hello.
This started out as a dream that could never be a nightmare
Because I always believed in miracles and Santa Claus
And happy endings, in spite of it all, or maybe because of it all.
But there’s no tearful soliloquy, no hopeful final notes.
I just can’t understand
Why I’m still standing when everything else is gone.
Not a survivor but the one who is left,
Left to tell the story, left to figure out
Why even the depths of hell didn’t want me,
Spitting me out undone, half baked, raw.
Back to the light, still blind as a newborn
With eyes that do not see but a heart that sees all.
A heart that hurts less and less these days
But still bleeds as though it was wounded only seconds ago.
There’s a numbness, and there’s going to be a scar
To remind me that I was here.
For now, I cannot see past the sadness
Of the place we used to be, or the place before that
Where only love used to be, pure and unburdened.
Now you can’t look me in the eye
Because you’ve waited so long, so long, just to say goodbye.
Was that about my mother, or about some silly woman I thought I loved? Some silly woman I thought would fill heart with music and song and the sentimentality of a Hallmark card. Was that a realistic expectation? Apparently not, because I concluded long ago that what I envisioned in either mother or lover does not exist.
I believe now that my mother did the best she could. She had a few cards stacked against her, but she never folded until the very end. Maybe the end wasn’t entirely her choice, or maybe she felt that it was her duty to come when called. Who knows, but it was, indeed, a long strange trip…without which I would not be who I am sitting here and writing these words.
I keep trying to figure out where I’m supposed to be, what I’m supposed to be doing, whether I have what it takes to do whatever that is. People say I’m strong, but I say I’m just too stupid to lie down. That may sound harsh, but it’s more true than not – I didn’t know it was an option to throw my hands up and quit entirely,
The Sound Hole 