Exit

Maybe it was nothing you said.
Maybe it was just something I heard.

Maybe it was something you didn't say that lingered in the darkness,
And that could be why I still sleep with a light on,
Looking for things that aren't there
Like little lawn donkeys that wander off and disappear somewhere deep into Staten Island.

Or maybe it was something you said
On the Turnpike, on time, in daylight.
But I don't want these to be the things I remember.
I know I don't want to be remembered that way.
I don't want to remember every dripping detail of your center or your scent.
So don't ask me if I knew it was your song.
Maybe that's something else you never said.

I'm stopped at the end of the exit ramp tonight,
Trying to get the right song and the write Words.
And I still don't know if you went left or right.
And I don't remember when we met.
I still don't wear a watch.
Was it something you said
way back when. When, back there,
as I listened to all the things I couldn't hear.
But I still get lost on the Turnpike
no matter what time it is.

Here in between the rain and the radio
I realize there was nothing you could have said.
There was nothing you could have made me remember.
I knew there was only one ending to my story.
There was only one thing to Be.
But the rent was late and the watch was broken.
It was nothing you said.
It was everything you didn't.
You slept through the best parts
and I don't set alarms.

Close your eyes when you're hiding in the dark
or the headlights will find you and give you away.
With out the drummer driving this song -
It's just something else
you never said
that I don't want to remember.

Intrepidly

It was during a drive to Mexico,
a long nighttime drive down Route 1
with the ocean beside us,
someplace in between San Diego and Rosarita
when he told me.

We had the world to ourselves
deep into the horizon
as far as the eye could see.
I suppose he felt safe. I suppose he felt resigned.
He smiled as he said it, a brave smile. A clear voice.
He said that everyone would pass one day.
All of us.
The only difference was
he knew when.

And instead of placing fear or anger in that,
he let it comfort him,
like Bactine on your scraped knee when you're 9.

The sun was never brighter.
And that drive back up the coast wasn't nearly long enough.

We were at that age where it seemed unthinkable and far away and not possible. I don't know where he became brave, I don't know if the smile was forced for my swallowing. It was as if he'd made a simple decision some time on the Grapevine to find the power in a situation to which he was powerless.

I'm at the age now where it happens sometimes.
And I don't know many people who kept the ocean beside them.
I don't know many who found their center in the passing.
He knew so much more than when.

He was Bactine and sunshine.

Worded You

I came to care about the shudder of winter
and the little portraits I’d compose
of faces past and turmoils evened.
I came to understand the differences between the agings.
There is the immediate.
There is the momentary.
And in the end there is the knowing.

I never painted your portrait.
I never knew your moments
and I never understood what failed to shudder in your winter.

If this were fiction, right here is where I’d say: He’d look back on that storm for decades to follow with a sense of connection to the woman who cared.

But this isn’t fiction. And I didn't.

This is the reverence. And now I do.

It’s the shudder in the winter in the portrait of the window where I came to care.
I came to care.
But when I left,
When I stopped coming,
You stopped looking through that window.

I came to care about the shudder of your windows and the portrait of your winter.
But I never Worded you.

And for that,
I will always be sorry.