This Is A Fire Door Never Leave Open

Headlights race towards the corner of the dining room

And half illuminate a face before they disappear

You breathe in forty years of failing to describe a feeling

I breathe out smoke against a window

Trace the letters in your name

Our letters sound the same

Full of all our changing

That isn't change at all

All straight lines circle sometime

You said, "Somewhere, there's a box full of replacement parts

To all the tenderness we've broken or let rust away"

Somewhere, sympathy is more than just a way of leaving

Somewhere, someone says, "I'm sorry"

Someone's making plans to stay

So tell me it's okay

Tell me anything or

Show me there's a pull

Unassailable

That will lead you there from the dark alone

To benevolence that you've never known

Or you knew when you were four and can't remember

Where a small knife tears out those sloppy seams

And the silence knows what your silence means

And your metaphors, as mixed as you can make them

Are linked like days, together

I still hear trains at night, when the wind is right

I remember everything

Lick and thread this string

That will never mend you or tailor more

Than a memory of a kitchen floor

Or the fire door that we kept propping open

And I love this place, the enormous sky

And the faces, hands that I'm haunted by

So why can't I forgive these buildings

These frameworks labeled home?

Headlights race towards the corner of the dining room

And half illuminate a face before they disappear