View From Our Bedroom Window

You are sleeping in the room alone now

You are restless in the night

When the lightning from the storm strikes, you shine

For a second in the light, I wait

For a moment when the weather breaks

I can feel you in the mattress shake

I can see the way an old pain haunts you

Mourning falling into frame

You stayed down

I face my failure in the way I escaped it

In the crumble before a break down takes

Like a rapture in the night, you fight hard

I face my own pain the way I embraced it

In the bedroom with the door locked tight

Like a coward when the flash burns bright, I'll hide

Your hands burnt on the torch’s flame

Fighting the path away

Brighter than lightning and burning, striking the ground

We spent summers awake

We shake at shadows shapes

The wind, it rattles our dreams

We're always turning around

You were standing in the doorway

You were staring in the flames

How the fire from the house next door mixed

With the colours of the cop cars I saw

Neighbours gathered in the alleyway

In the summer, in the heat, I wait

For a wind that I can chase your pain out

Gather fire from the flames, I wait

Nights we've all shook

Any noise that got in our room

Rattled on the floor like shells scattering

Or like hail falling on the hood of our car

Do you remember that drive south?

Coast-bound, just us two

Savannah west in the mirror and winter in rear-view, burning

How the storm fell so harshly we felt swallowed

And traffic stopped before and behind us

Hard rain and sheets grey and unbroken

Hazards flashed dimly in all directions

Like small satellites or like lighthouse beacons

We turned the radio off

I gripped the wheel tight when the storm burst

And clouds split suddenly open to the sky

All the colours that were in us, dumbstruck

With love and terror and both

As if before us stood temples ancient and terrifying

The light refracting truth to see death and life and all things

Your hands burnt on the torch’s flame

I was the last to change

Strike me like a lightning bolt and burning me down

Your hands burnt on the torch's flame

I was the last to change

Strike me like a lightning bolt and burning me down

The wind rattles our chains

We shake our fists at the pain

We shake at shadow shapes

We cup our hands in the storm

And watch our houses burning

We catch the rain to fight it