i want to make a map of this house... each crack in the pain, each cob-webbed crevice... i want to blueprint the bookshelves, as full as they are (to keep a record of the reading that has occupied these rooms)... i want to sketch the creases in the bedsheets where poetry and passion have been woven and spread... doorways and hinges, curtains ever-animated by the wind... i want to memorize the closets (one for clothes, one for quiet moments), every tile in the kitchen, every coil on the stove... wide-opened windows, fit to welcome the moonlight, sunlight, flash-lit messages in morse code, and calls for company from strangers down the street... i want to take snapshots of the ceiling, pixelate the pantry, carve the staircases into stone...

i want to make a map of this house, because i know yer leaving soon (if not soon, someday)... because it won't be the same when you've gone, and a map is by far the best of remembering (at least, for me, anyway)... i want to make a map of this house and tattoo it to my hands - to remind me always that as long i hold tightly the foundation of our love, i'm never far from home...

"...we reigned at the pool hall with one iron cue ball, and we never let the bastards get us down." (colin meloy)

i've been listening again... listening to the songs we sang from city to small town, staring at the centre (where the system seemed to swell), our eyes fixed on anything but the high way ahead of us... we raced from the restaurant, anxious to place our nimble fingers on the liner notes we'd grown to love so well... i remember then the envy i felt for yer stereo - wishing my van were built for bad weather (the kind that makes a woman want to drive and sing and drive and sing and drive again)... those were the quieter moments of our love, when the music was loud and the living was lazy... when i looked at you and saw only sound...

i lost myself on side street this morning - turning north, neglecting the miles that lay between my apartment and the steps to yer front door... i found myself reliving a summer long forgotten: bach, the back roads, and you... before our history was laid like an interstate across the atlas of my skin... before yer face became a fading happiness - blending with the Boston Mountains like a late september sun... we fell to a concrete floor, surrounded by screaming musicians - the verses twisted (tasty) on our tongues... i knew then we might never stop smiling...

and i haven't... from that day to this - a cruel Hollywood to a comfort in calm... this hidden paradise of an Arkansas city... it lingered in the corners of the room we shared... she brought a piece of it with her before she left to steal the Ireland from the sea... i kept its photographs tucked safely beneath our floorboards (you knew it would happen, you put it to words)... but even still, i drive and sing and drive and sing and drive again - wishing for one more sudden vacation, in the passenger seat of our dreams...

i miss you, funnyface...

she leans over the table to investigate his fingerprints - cracking a code some three decades running (he's been working that magic for years)... i'd missed the nature of her research - the delicate way in which she studies the skin... i'd missed those candid moments of conspiracy in her mind... she looked at me from across the crowded room - staring over the shoulder of a man who would've loved to have been loved by her...

"is this how it's gonna be?" she asked...

she'd always had a way with words -
of never really needing them...

so we turned off the tube and we crawled to yer room
leaving discarded clothes in our way
and we both had some fun, tho i twice bit my tongue
and it lasted too long for my taste
and there's this nagging suspicion that won't leave me alone tonight
its just that everything i try to do, nothing seems to turn out right

(Colin Meloy)