Listen To The Apples

Life will break you. 

Nobody can protect you from that, 

and living alone won't either, 

for solitude will also break you with its yearning. 

You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. 

You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. 

And when it happens that you are broken, 

or betrayed, 

or left, 

or hurt, 

or death brushes near, 

let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. 

Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

-Louise Erdrich 

 The Painted Drum LP

Part I

And I won't be a pretty sight when the day comes that I'll be wishing for the wide open road. 
I'll be wishing for the lines to come and go. 

I pray that it will hit me clear and cold so I can watch our lives spin away 
and it will be all I know of our loving home. 
I always hoped my thoughts were louder than my words 
but I said it all when I was drunk as hell with all my money gone. 

We told our deepest secrets on the tips of those lip stained cigarettes
Yet, we probably won't remember a thing when the sun comes up. 
Over the years this is how we learned to celebrate the lives we never had. 
Drunken talks of regrets and missed dreams.

I'll call you 
when I'm all alone 
and the thoughts 
shift through my head. 

Just promise
not to blame me 
and don't swing 
while I'm down. 
You were a dream 
and the 
only 
thing that was in my head. 

I don't know what love feels like on neutral ground 
and am I wrong to say I'm the only one that thinks this way?
I just hope my secrets are safe with me. 

I can't say that I really trust myself.  

I pray that light will peek through my window 
run across my floor 
and flood my soul. 

I need this light to bring me joy. 

How do I know what you are feeling now? 
How do I know what I am even feeling? 

....while I watch these stones sink.