Greyhound Cabaret

The beams of streetlights
Illuminate my folded hands
In regular intervals:
Fingers gently laced
The way ours were when
We fell asleep.
So I shut my eyes.

There is a place I've kept for you that's part of my soul.
It's the laugh I hold back because no one would get it,
And the harmony I hum when you're not there to sing.
But I feel like the only piece of your soul
In the lonely town I return to.
I thought you had gone, a follower of dreams,
A complacent nomad.
But in that city I found you.
In that city, I could let go of your hand,
Free myself from your grasp,
And breathe and think nothing-
But yet, there you'd be,
Your eyes in the streetlights,
Your voice a distant saxophone seductive and low.
Your feet walked this pier, your hands climbed this tree!
So it is there my feet will walk, there my hands will take hold;
There I will roam with you every morning,
Wait for your return at night,
Sleep to the rhythm of your breath,
There your hand will find mine in the dark,
My children will call you their father,
There the boy that you are is the man that you'll be.
If all the tears I have shed for your absence could form,
Like ceramic tiles on the paper,
An image of this!

But the journey will be fine,
For I have such an image of you in the tips of my fingers and behind my eyes,
That I can picture you easily
In the empty bus seat next to mine.

(In the future, I will carry you across Manhattan
Or tremble in your arms,
Whatever I hear your heart say
In the distant saxophone,
Seductive and low)