Us

Us

We called in sick.

And Hell could barely contain us and Heaven certainly didn't want us.
And I was Time and you were Luck.
And I was Time and you were late.

Nostalgia keeps on calling me back.
It's the crumbs at the bottom of the box.
It's the sun in our eyes.
It's static keeping us awake late at night.
And it's as bittersweet as hang-nails, as the taste of sugar and dust.

And I was Time and you were Luck;
but oh, it was so hard to run the galaxy on an empty stomach.
And oh, it was so easy to let ourselves corrode.
Let yourself go.
And then our feathers fell out like sun-softened snow and we never flew again.

I think there was one time,
in a room full of people with nothing but skin in common,
And I think you said, "It was the best of times."
But piano keys kept falling from your mouth
and I thought it would be rude to stare.

What is truth and what does it look like?
Because it's hard to answer questions with a city in your mouth
and it's very hard to hear with your fingers in your ears.
You learned to bake a pie from scratch,
And I learned to like the way you breathed.

And I'm sorry that I'm so abrupt, corrupt, and starry-eyed,
but I'd be so much sorrier, if we weren't so much alike.
Because I was Time and you were Luck,
and sometimes the stars used to shine at noon.
But I never said that sunlight was any different than starlight.

You wanted to know what God looked like,
and are you happy now?
Because I know that we fight about the color of the sky,
but I swear on my life, it has always been gold.

Self-righteous, self-indulgent
Self-reliant, self-obsessed.
You watched black and white TV
because the colors made you sick.
Refundable, repentant
Redundant, resigned.
And you never let them bring us down,
Because I was Time and you were Luck.

The trouble with silence is that your heart has to stop,
And never say never (but what if I whisper?)
You and I were hungry, but we were willing to starve,
we were willing to heal
when the universe was young,
when I was Time and you were Luck,
and the space between us was very small.

There is dust on the piano now.

Cheers,

Syl