I count to three and grin.
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You smile and let me in.
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We sit and watch the wall you painted purple.
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Speech will spill on space.
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Our little cups of grace.
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But pauses rattle on about the way that you cut the snow-fence,
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braved the blood,
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the metal of those hearts that you always end up pressing your tongue to.
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How your body still remembers things you told it to forget.
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How those furious affections followed you.
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I've got this store-bought way of saying I'm okay,
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and you learned how to cry in total silence.
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We're talented and bright.
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We're lonely and uptight.
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We've found some lovely ways to disappoint,
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but the airport's always almost empty this time of the year,
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so let's go play on a baggage carousel.
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Set our watches forward like we're just arriving here
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from a past we left in a place we knew too well.
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(Hold on to the corners of today,
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and we'll fold it up to save until it's needed. Stand still.
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Let me scrub that brackish line that you got
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when something rose and then receded.
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-----------------
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Watermark
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The Weakerthans |