Complicit

I was on the sidewalk

And you were in a dream

You said you couldn't stand it these days

Your sensitivity

The city felt oppressive

The heat and the noise

And even at home you felt every unspoken voice

I don't know how, but I tell you'll be fine

And I set the table and you pour the wine

You always have been capable

Always have been kind

It isn't really your fault

Just the tenor of the times

You got a job and lost it

And they never told you why

And you can't seem to get past it

This ordinary lie

And they're saying this summer

Is the worst it's ever been

With the radio on

And they're talking

Another shooting

Foods creeping in the lowlands

And everybody's shouting

And I just hold your hand

And I say nothing

I say nothing at all

I don't think my voice matters really after all

I was raised to hear the curlews

I was raised to notice light

And I watch the little swallows

Delicate in their flight

I trail my hand down through the water

Of the familiar riverside

For hours in such silence, I lay beside

Terrified, for knowing in my time

For all the parts per million

For unstoppable design

How can you get over knowing all you know?

All the facts and the figures you learned years ago

I moved back to the city

I lost myself in you

Or in some kind of fiction

Or in some kind of truth

I let myself get cynical

I felt cold and bruised

And the facts never changed

And time only moves

And somewhere above the tree line

Silent just like you

The river never froze in

And footsteps break through

And somehow in my heart

Am I supposed to make do

With the fragments of the stars

The blue-white streetlights let through?

All the birds not calling

All the hot winds blow

I took your picture in the sunset

Smiling in the shadow

You and I, we are complicit

You and I were never blind

Now we're gonna live with it, our open eyes