This Is a Fire Door Never Leave Open

Headlights race towards the corner of the dining room And half illuminate a face before they disappear You breathe in forty years of failing to describe a feeling I breathe out smoke against the window, trace the letters in your name Our letters sound the same Full of all our changing That isn't change at all All straight lines circle sometime You said somewhere there's a box full of replacement parts to All the tenderness we've broken or let rust away Somewhere sympathy is more than just a way of leaving Somewhere someone says I'm sorry, someone's making plans to stay So tell me it's okay Tell me anything, or Show me there's a pull Unassailable That will lead you there from the dark alone To benevolence that you've never known Or you knew when you were four and can't remember Where a small knife tears out those sloppy seams And the silence knows what you silence means And your metaphors, as mixed as you can make them Are linked like days, together I still hear trains at night when the wind is right I remember everything, lick and thread this string That will never mend you or tailor more Than a memory of a kitchen floor Or the fire-door that we kept propping open And I love this place, the enormous sky And the faces, hands that I'm haunted by So why can't I forgive these buildings These frameworks labeled home Headlights race towards the corner of the dining room And half illuminate a face before they disappear