The wind is too damn lazy to go around
It steals your hope of ever getting warmer
Taught the telephone wires to sing the loneliest songs
And I still hold my breath around every corner
Cause tomorrow spring might still be lost
Stuck in a ditch next to a dirty plywood cross
With the beer cans and best laid plans
And barbed wire skeletons of dreams
In the Northeast
The stop sign's creased from where the snowplow hit
And the city glitters like a shot glass in the sun
At night the stars are sharp as diamond drill bits
You can forget for a while about the dead and dumb
Went from living the dream to just living
The hardest part of being broke is the pretending
When November plants cold boots upon your shoulders
It doesn't scare you in the least
In the Northeast
It's hard to tell which is heavier
The concrete sky or this tiny town
You wonder why I say I'm like the weather
As unforgiving as the January ground
My smile is still an echo of the ridgeline
You won't recognize these hills in any song
A folded map that's worn away with time
But it's as good a place as any to be from
Even when every day's a bluebird sky
Don't always do things the hard way but you try
You can't escape the boulders surfacing in spring
Or this rusty rage you've been bequeathed
In the Northeast
