103 lines
2.8 KiB
Plaintext
103 lines
2.8 KiB
Plaintext
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There were shadows in the bedroom
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Where the light got thrown by the lamp on the night stand
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On your mother's side, after midnight, still
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You can see it all, you can see it all
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And the closet in the corner
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On the far back shelf with the keepsakes, she hid
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That box there, full of letters of regret
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By the pictures of the kids
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You get faint recollections of your
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Mother's sigh, countryside drive
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And the landscape seen from the window of the back seat
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With some flowers in a basket
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That afternoon after school
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You and your older sisters
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Found your parents in the kitchen at the table
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Father lifting off the lid of the box
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And a hush fell
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Over everything like a funeral prayer
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A reverence, ancestral, heavy in the air
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Though you didn't understand what it meant
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That they never said her name aloud around you
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Even sitting at the table with her things they'd kept
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You recall faintly cards, tiny clothes
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And the smell of the paint in the upstairs bedroom
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Until then you didn't know that's what the box had held
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Your parents tiptoeing slowly around
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Always speaking in code
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No, they never said her name aloud around you
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Only told you it was perfect where your sister went
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And you didn't understand why it hurt them
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So much then that she'd come and left so soon
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Could only guess inside your head at what a "stillbirth" meant
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Only knew that mother wept
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You watched while father held her
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Said "Some things come, but can't stay here"
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You saw a brightness, like a light through your eyes
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Closed tight then she tumbled away
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From here, some place
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To remain in the night time shadows she made
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To be an absence in mom
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A sadness hanging over her
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Like some pentecostal flame
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Drifting on and off
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She was "Sister" only whispered
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Sometimes "Her" or "The Child We Lost"
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You were visions
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A vagueness
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A faded image
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You were visions
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You were a flame lit
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That burned out twice as brightly
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As the rest of us did
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When you left, you were light
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Then you tumbled away
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There are shadows that fall
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Still here at a certain angle
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In the bedroom on the night stand
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By your mother's side
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From the light left on there
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There's the box in the closet
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All the things kept
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And the landscape where she left
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Flowers on the grave
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Marble where they etched that name
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And mother cried the whole way home
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But she never said it once out loud
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On the way back home from where you thought they meant
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When they said where sister went
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After grandpa got hospice sick
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And he couldn't fall sleep
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They wheeled his stretcher bed beside her at night
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And I saw the light
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On the day that he died
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By their bed in grandma's eyes
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While us grandkids said our goodbyes
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She said, "Don't cry"
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Somewhere he holds her
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And said a name I didn't recognize
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And the light with all the shadows combined...;
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____________________________
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Name THE CHILD WE LOST 1963
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Artist La Dispute
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Album Rooms of the House
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