This Is a Fire Door, Never Leave Open

[Verse 1]

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

[Pre-Chorus]

Our letters sound the same

Full of all our changing

That isn't change at all

All straight lines circle sometime

[Verse 2]

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

[Pre-Chorus]

So tell me it's okay

Tell me anything

Or show me there's a pull

Unassailable

[Chorus]

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

[Pre-Chorus]

I still hear trains at night when the wind is right

I remember everything

Lick and thread this string

[Chorus]

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?

[Outro]

Headlights race towards the corner of the dining room

And half illuminate a face before they disappear