This Accordion Life

You don't know me

No one really does

That's just the shape of smoke

From setting myself on fire

Lit from the inside

Floating above

If you want problems get a future and survive it

No one really does

Tomorrow is terrifying

The past is terrifying

But in the right now

Right now, right now

Right now, I am aflame

Inside of a life coming apart

At home in a minor key

This accordion life, with you

I was holding back the porch on a Halloween weekend

Sun-set in my eyes

We had a fire on

Played a new tune on the keys

Kept thinking about jumping

Or spreading out

Always leaving something behind

Even the kindness of absence

Or a clear head

Or my cannonball heart

Stuck inside a crack in the sky

Inside a forced answer

Rolling my Rrrrrs

Packing the anxiety furnace

Racing in slow motion

I will always be

A presence carved in wake

A better version of yesterday

Four thousand weeks away

I found the words I wrote in the back of the van

Pushed into the seat

The one we kept for sleep

When we were out for months on the sea

Melting and folding myself back into me

I told myself

That getting better means I have to keep going

And so I did

Inside of a life coming apart

Right at home in a minor key

This accordion life, with you

I'm better alive

Waking to your absence

While the weeks go by the window

Outside that hospital garden

Inside a dead end

Working at forgetting about it

It's embarrassing

All the times I've hidden

Or was made to feel I should hide any of the ways I shine

Told everyone I'm fine

And believed that lie myself

Into one more fall

And then another

And another one

Until I'm falling again

And giving everything

Every time

Everywhere

Stretched to the edges of me

Surrendered to the exhale

Sanding down the shimmer

Leaving what makes this scary

And stunning

A mirror to what I'm becoming

You don't know me

No one really does

That's just the shape of smoke

From setting myself on fire

Lit from the inside, floating above

Inside this life coming apart

At home in a minor key

Out of all the things that I'll miss the most

Inside this accordion life

An entire heart away

I'll miss the fall, with you