Common Burn

Simple things like your overcoat
And your beauty
That’s still burning me
Let me hang around
Even if it’s just some way to have

Some common burn
A common burn

So I spend the night in someone’s house
That you clouded
Oh, simple me that you fled
But we have that in common

That common burn
That common burn

Oh, well, heavens, I said
So many times before
You could sit around and have
Everything that you scored
Just don’t come home and say
You’ve been asleep
When you know you’re burning
Someone

That common burn
That common burn

Something that I thought would take hours took only a few minutes. And then something that I thought would take years took less than a single morning. Not the completing, not the finishing! The taking…

And then the last time there was a ‘taking,’ I wasn’t thinking about minutes or hours or years (not thinking about mornings either), I was only thinking of how to make things easier for myself, and that meant making things harder for myself. Rest is always on the way, to be sure, and you will never be happy right now, happiness is always on its way too.

I sort of have black hair. I sort of brush it in the mornings with my fingers. I sort of drop water on my scalp when I’m too tired. Then I sort of wake up. And I sort of live. Hold up. I took too long this time and now the car is driving away. Sorry, I knew I should have gotten up earlier. I don’t remember ever waking up to warmth, is that even a possibility? What place in the world has mornings that are warm? I, deep down, probably want to open my eyes to a feathery, warm light and run my hands down my arms and fall out of bed. There’s no cars and no school bus… no sounds of engines or tires.

I wanted to say goodbye, not start something all over again. The ‘goodbye’ letters I send–the people think that a correspondence has begun, but I had it in mind to end it.

I looked down at her once and saw that her eyes were so tired. Her name starts with a hard sound and knocks against my teeth when I try to say her name. Which isn’t often because I don’t actually know her that well. But, you know, when I do say her name, that’s what happens. I said, “Oh yeah, of course I wish I had a softer name too.”