They asked for more (what do you think this fan club is for?).
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I slithered up each rose corridor.
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I kept a warm, safe place at my core, before I lost it.
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They asked for blood.
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What do you think this woman’s made of?
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I stuck a small, thin pin in my thumb.
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They dreamt a low, long line to be crossed ? and I crossed it.
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I’m alive, but a different kind of alive than I used to be.
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I retire to a split white smile to be seen in an old stag magazine.
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And this girl’s eyes, when they were roughly wrenched open, I could see a starry stair up your thigh.
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You hid behind your hair (oh, but I saw you were smiling), while all these guys, all these curious sets of eyes, safe behind a TV screen, I let them pry, pick apart, and hang up to dry almost every piece of me.
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Oh, what a trip.
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Oh, what a shimmering silver ship.
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Oh, what a hot half-life I half-lived.
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And the stripes and stars, how they stripped off of the siding when my life ripped off from the part that played as a kid into the part that blazed through your lids to find a warm, safe place and to sit, curled up, inside it.
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So here’s “goodbye”, from the part that’s staying behind to the part that has to leave, to the sublime lips that were never spoiled by a line, to the face inside the beam, who wasn’t me.
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Starry Stairs
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| Okkervil River |
