Things I Can't Seem to Say (#317)

How much you mean to me.

So I’ll let Oberst do it. A Spindle, A Darkness, A Fever, and A Necklace from Fevers and Mirrors

“So long everything!” he shouted. Then he ran next door to Margot’s house.
“I’m moving,” he said.
“Where?” asked Margot.
“Two weeks away,” he said.
“Mitchell, where is that?” asked Margot.
“It’s everywhere I’ll be after I walk for two weeks,” said Mitchell. “I have lived in the same place for a long time, it is time for me to go some place else.”
“No,” said Margot. “You have only lived next door for fifty years.”
“Sixty,” said Mitchell.
“Fifty, sixty. What’s the difference?” said Margot. “I want you to stay next door forever.”
“I can’t,” said Mitchell. “I do not want to wake up in the same old bed and eat breakfast in the same old kitchen. Every room in my house is the same old room, because I have lived there too long.”

You turn on a spindle,
You are so much looser now.
But you’re not explaining how,
You gained such new repose.
I touch the clasp of your locket,
With its picture held
Some secret you wouldn’t tell
But let it choke your neck.
So we imagine a darkness
Where all shapes divide,
Solids changing into light
With a burst of heat so bright.
Well fine, don’t do what I want you to,
Don’t degrade yourself the way I do
Because you don’t depend on all the shit
That I use to make my moods improve.

“And you look at me and think, same old face, same old tail, same old scales, same old walk, same old talk,” said Margot.
“No,” said Mitchell. “I like your face, tail, scales, walk and talk. I like you.”
“I like, like, like you.”
“I like, like, like you, too,” said Mitchell. He walked through the door.
“I must pack,” he said.

Near a sea of pianos
There were waves of chords
That crashed against the shore
In one huge and useless roar.
And there were girls bringing water,
Like a dream they came
To cure the fever of my brain,
And soothe my burning throat.
And they made me a necklace,
Hanging beads of sweat
On a string of my regrets.
And placed it around my neck.
And they were singing,
“Don’t you do what you’ve wanted to.
Yeah, don’t destroy yourself
Like those cowards do.
And maybe the sun keeps coming up
Because it’s gotten used to you,
And your constant need for proof.”