I’m down to the dishes now, except for some wine and some bread
I’ve got a deadline on hold, a millennium winter ahead
The list of my casualties touches the tiles of my floor
Along with the names that I swayed from my prodigal door
You’d been to the dentist when I called from a boxcar last night
You sounded so fragile, you really did give me a fright
But I know you are up to it, I think we both know where it’s at
There’s a wall with your name on it somewhere in a theatre flat
If you ask what I miss, there ain’t much, really, that I can name
And if you asked what I’ve got, my reply would pretty much be the same
And I’ve thought about therapy, I’ve thought about writing a book
But nothing will capture remotely the way that you look
When I picture the faces of people I surely have hurt
I wonder if I was too brilliant when I dug out the dirt
The wounds in a child, doctor, tell me, how fast do they heal?
I’m grateful and mourning, I can’t figure out how to feel
The last nights I’ve spent in the shallowest conceivable pit,
Where the resonant walls of my Jericho hardly did fit
I’m down to the dishes now, along with some grief and some shame,
But I’m prone to be saved by a fragment of your secret name