Juliette

I'm the same man you met

Just with a little less fire

A little less get up

But then a bit more quiet

Keep it inside or blame it on being tired

Sit with red wine and re-runs of the wire

I'm the man that you met

But, understanding it gets

A little deeper when dark thoughts get caught in the head

Man that you met

Just holding fewer smiles

Spent on people I hadn't seen in a while

I'll sleep a weekend away

I frequently stay just stuck inside my mind

Never see my face

Eat the blame 'cause I'm nothing like the man that you met

Run back time, I see you cry Juliette

Crying in bed

While deciding to end our little fairytale script that

We've written and read

Whitlam has left now the page is only holding what's dead

But I'm still here, so please wait Juliette

I'd be running away

I'd be running away

Hop on a freight, my lone runaway train

I'd be needing a change

Can see that you're there, but something subtle has changed

It's like the passion in your life is slowly slipping from frame

Missing the way you used to look at life and live for today

I don't blame you

I guess I have gone amiss

Live in my joggers just running after past bliss

The past kisses that lips lived are starting to slip

Can see you parting at the seams with our threading in bits

But darling, please

I'm the man that you met

Just going through a moment like a tunnel of stress

You're still my Juliette

And during yours, I'm doing my best

Dearly, forgive me for missing the call, it's a moment of rest

I'm still here

Just stuck in slump

Your boy still lives, he's just late in waking up

She's married now

And, so am I

Both, very much happy, very content

Well, as much as adulthood can make one so

Both of us, fluttering around the soft thoughts

Of having children soon

Starting a family

"Settling down", as her father would often say after

A glass of Beaujolais or a cigarette

I do find it funny though

How, years later

When we find ourselves in the same stuffy rooms

At these work events or reunions

All those distant yet

Faintly familiar feelings return

The old butterflies, re-awoken

And it's there that I begin to fantasise

To daydream

And maybe those dreams will always will be

Maybe I'll always find the colour of another life in her eyes

As we so gently, ask

"How have you been?"

And, as per the script, we'll both blink and smile

Always in polite recognition of what we know to be true

That it could have been us, 'settling down'

It could have been us meeting every morning rather than

Once every blue moon in stuffy rooms

Still, we're very much happy, very content

Well, as much as adulthood can make one so