For Mayor in Splitsville

Funny what you think of after a collapse

While lying in the dirt the first thing that comes back is never quite what you’d have guessed

And if you could have, you probably would’ve said you’d check if all your limbs were intact still and then try to get out

We played house with the neighbors in their basement

Sister made me husband she was older so I did her bidding

I remember once their dad came in said, “you think this is bad?

You don’t know the half” and he laughed

It’s funny what things come back

The first things you see

How he sort of smiled like it’s only a joke but he was lying

There was something else inside of his eyes

All those secrets people tell to little children

Are warnings that they give them

Like, “look, I’m unhappy. Please, don’t make the same mistake as me.”

Why are those old worn out jokes on married life told at toasts at receptions still?

How does it never occur how often couples get burned and end uncertain in splitsville?

Funny what you think of in the wreckage, lying there in the dirt and the dust and the glass

How you’re suddenly somewhere, in the desert, in the nighttime, and it’s getting close to christmas

And then her and that movie voice she uses when she reads

“Welcome to the land of enchantment” from a highway sign

And it’s late so you take the next exit

When that trip ended we came back the rent was due I was jobless

I guess in retrospect I should’ve sensed decay

Then that day, how you said, “I just don’t know” and I promised

We’d rearrange things to fix the mess I’d made here

But I guess in the end we just moved furniture around

But I guess in the end it sort of feels like every day it’s harder to stay happy where you are

There are all these ways to look through the fence into your neighbor’s yard

Why even risk it? It’s safer to stay distant

When it’s so hard now to just be content

Because there’s always something else

Now I’m proposing my own toast, composing my own joke for those married men

Maybe I’m miserable, I’d rather run for mayor in splitsville than suffer your jokes again