He misses me still, but that's old news.
He's missed me for so long now - he can do it in his sleep.

He does it while he eats alone at his desk,
while he runs for a train,
while the rain is coming down in sheets.
While a girl takes off her dress and he reaches for her,
his hands hesitate a decimal. He turns off the light,
and misses me.

It grows inside his chest, like a bonsai tree -
something natural but stunted.
Snipped and pruned carefully, but not allowed
to grow outside it's box. Not allowed to put down roots.

He hauled it off, across the sea.
Across China and the Middle East, he misses me.

Half a world apart, in Amsterdam I walk
with my eyes to the ground, all brown and grey.
Thinking of the planes and trains that bore him
away.
This has become second nature for me.

It's midnight in Tokyo, he sits at his desk
in the light from the street
thinking of trees, canals, red bricks, me
and when we sleep, he and I both,
it's with ghosts in the sheets.

All this malice in my heart
so much hate in this spine
these tidal wave to drown in eyes
16 shadows follow behind,

too much ink in these veins
not enough hurt to spill them
no time for prayer no more
stuck with this fiend in my mouth
tell me how to vanquish it,

I miss the morphine
miss her warm embrace
I'm all hate without her

The lines that are etched in my skin
don't signify that I'm not right, not okay.
To me, they're a sign that I'm here and alive,
that I lived through a whole new day.

I made a place for myself
in my skin, not some medicine-cabinet shelf.
Yet, you still try to offer me help.

I get it. You're disappointed.
I'm fine. I get your point...
but you still tell me to change my ways.

If I'm suffering madness,
please don't mistake it as sadness,
I've got it all under control.

I'm remarkably glad
for the moments I've had,
I'd never think to trade them away.

So don't look at my skin
and the way that it bruises,
or the cracks that form canyons within.

Please, just look at my soul.
It's under control.
I wear these wounds proudly, I'd say.

You are the town and we are the clock.
We are the guardians of the gate in the rock.
The Two.
On your left and on your right
In the day and in the night,
We are watching you.

Wiser not to ask just what has occurred
To them who disobeyed our word;
To those
We were the whirlpool, we were the reef,
We were the formal nightmare, grief
And the unlucky rose.

Climb up the crane, learn the sailor's words
When the ships from the islands laden with birds
Come in.
Tell your stories of fishing and other men's wives:
The expansive moments of constricted lives
In the lighted inn.

But do not imagine we do not know
Nor that what you hide with such care won't show
At a glance.
Nothing is done, nothing is said,
But don't make the mistake of believing us dead:
I shouldn't dance.

We're afraid in that case you'll have a fall.
We've been watching you over the garden wall
For hours.
The sky is darkening like a stain,
Something is going to fall like rain
And it won't be flowers.

When the green field comes off like a lid
Revealing what was much better hid:
Unpleasant.
And look, behind you without a sound
The woods have come up and are standing round
In deadly crescent.

The bolt is sliding in its groove,
Outside the window is the black removers' van.
And now with sudden swift emergence
Come the woman in dark glasses and humpbacked surgeons
And the scissors man.

This might happen any day
So be careful what you say
Or do.
Be clean, be tidy, oil the lock,
Trim the garden, wind the clock,
Remember the Two.