La Dispute
You and I in Unison
What will I find?
Some sacred thing to help me handle the tragedy?
Or did I once-Did I have it and lose it?
No one should ever have to walk through the fire alone
No one should ever have to brave that storm. No
Everybody needs someone or something
And when I sing, don’t I sing your name out
Right at the same time that I sing my own?
Some days I swear I can feel you splitting the light through the window frame
The shapes it makes are always warmer, always brighter than the rest of what comes through
Some days I swear I can hear you sing to me or whisper my name in the slightest way
It’s like the warmest light now laid across my bedroom floor is somehow actually you and not just sunlight
I have the memory climb down the balcony
I put a flower on the back of its dress
It’s probably best to forget it
It’s probably best to let go
I paint it the shade of where the skin and the lip meet
Only a moment after breaking the kiss. And
I blur out everything else
That’s how I choose to remember it
Some nights are a lot like the days, I lay awake too late, I watch the shadows casted
Trace your shape. Those silver slivers on the wall then on the bedsheets
I hear your song in the trees. I finally fall into rest
Often later when I’m sleeping you show up in my dreams
Just doing simple things, like buying groceries
And when I wake up I could swear you must’ve just left me
Like you got up to make breakfast or maybe just to get dressed
But the truth is, you were never there. You won’t ever be
Sometimes I think I’m not either so what do I do
When every day still seems to start and end with you?
And you won’t ever know, you won’t ever see
How much your ghost since then has been defining me
I leave the memory up atop the balcony
I tear this flower from the back of the dress
It’s best this time, I bet, to just forget and let go
Paint it the shade of where the lip bleeds and blur it out
I blur out everything else, just blur out everything else
And let go, and let go, and let go
Everybody has to let go someday
Everybody has to let go
I wonder when I will. I wonder
But if I still hear you singing in every city I meet
After I blur it all out, our every memory, if
You never fade with the days, your shape still haunting me then
Should I not just sing along?
Should I not just sing along?
I will sing sweetly hope that the notes change but
I do not need it to happen. I’m not resigned to it. And
If they never do I’ll sing your name in every line
Just like I did throughout this. Just like I’ve always done
In every gun, the empty church, and every tortured son
In all those giving up. In all those giving in
Until I die I will sing our names in unison
Until I die I will sing our names in unison