Thirty

There was a time

You put your hand on the small of my back

I was surprised that you touched me like that

But there in your head was a current of life

I could hardly stand to stay still

And I didn't imagine

If I did, I'd meet some joker, it

It was strange

How I could feel so sane

So plain when you're around

And unbidden to me

There it rose, the fantasy

Colored rose and easy

Yeah, I could see it so simple

Unsubtle, impossible, clearly

And strange

Far and as close as a mountain range

On the horizon, driving all day

They're always so sane

So plain after everything

Gas came down from a buck twenty, the joke was how

It broke the economy, anyhow

The dollar was down, but my friends opened businesses

There were no children

And again, I didn't get married

I wasn't close in a family

And my dad was raising a child in Nairobi

She was three now, he told me

Gas station I laughed in

I noticed fuckin' everything

The light, the reflections

Different languages, your expression

We would fall down laughin'

Effervescent and all over nothing

All over nothing

Just as though it was a joke my whole life through

All of the pain and the sorrow I knew

All of the tears that had fallen from my eyes

I can see why when I walked in the bar

Wanting the shade, I avoided your eyes

I was ashamed of my own mind

No SSRIs

My day is dark as your night

Oh, you've got the kindest of eyes, I cannot help

But notice sometimes, but you know as do I

I cannot look twice without falling right into

The sweet and the tender, a line between

Something that cannot, can never be

And just then an ambulance passed on the street

And you took my arm and reflexively

That was the year I was thirty

That was the year you were thirty-one

That was the year that we lost or we won

That was the year I was thirty

That was the year you were thirty-one

That was that year, now here, now here is another one