One Step at a Time

One step at a time

One step with you by my side

She let herself down

To the shoreline at dusk

Made sense to kneel

Where the world is never still

She said, ‘I am done

Being forever pulled and pushed’

The moon of bone shining there

Fresh as hunter’s kill

She always saw defiance

As a burning act of love

Listened to the sea

Draw in an icy breath, she said,

‘I will be the sailor

And the siren all at once,

I’m already knee-deep in love

With someone else’s death.’

On the breeze she heard

The town swell with life

People getting high to try

Cheat the coming fall

She called for truest dark

To look her dead in the eye

As a shadow black as oil

Spilled across the old sea wall

‘I have touched nothing’

She said the words aloud

‘We all saw this coming

And not one answered the call’

‘I have touched nothing

And my life has been so small,

I have touched nothing;

Well, now watch me move it all.’

One step at a time

One step with you by my side

She woke the white horses

To slam through her chest

She dreamed her days dissolving

In a storm of sand and salt breath

Carved in midnight clay

She’s the child of wasted years

She dances in the spray

As the skyline bends with tears

You live to sniff the sinking depths

I suck the rising sun

She raged against the waves

To feel the body come undone

The sirens are all screaming now

Will you answer the call

Of one who touches nothing

And still can move us all

One step at a time

One step with you by my side

So I drop my tiny lines

Of love into the void

It’s a way of life now

It goes beyond a choice

For in amongst the street deals

And back-alley brawls

There’s one who touches nothing

And she moves us all