Play In Reverse

One day we made a studio out of my living room

to kill some time recording songs,

and I wore sunglasses when I sang the one about you,

so you wouldn't misread my eyes and take it wrong.

'Cause in my music I can't sever

my association with our one-way romance

so I just try to not be too embittered

that I never stood a chance.

You're the most heartbreaking thing to watch -

dressed heart to soot as the ideal

Prince Charming from the stories

of laurel trees and lethal wheels.

I am not fair enough a maid,

a mere peasant in distress.

Your love a pretty fairy tale,

and I'm just too real, I guess.

And we listened to the whole session in reverse

after we'd finished that night,

and I heard my songs unsing themselves,

and inside me all wrongs were made right.

Suddenly, I'd never told you how I felt.

I never wrote that stupid song.

I never drunkenly kissed you,

and I never thought twice if you looked my way too long.

I never fell asleep in your arms on my floor.

I never felt a rush at your smile.

I just never considered you that way.

I listened, and dreamed all the while -

that you and I were closer still, than maybe we could ever be now,

but we're still playin' music at my place

and enjoying each other somehow. So,

let's spend the hours preserving the day

for future reference, when it'll be all I think about anyway.

And when I listen back, I'll try to remember your face in the light

of my side table lamp protesting the darkness of night.

As I, too, mourn the coming of tomorrow

and the death for which today is due,

and hope I might get to live my ever after

with someone that's at least a little like you.