(the whiskey might make you feel better if it doesn’t kill you first)
(long-lost convictions and unfilled prescriptions)
(yellowed in the bottom of your purse)
(with your distrust of science, and long-believed lies of your lover)
(you can’t tell what’s worse)
(a life with no sadness or a life with no end)

laying in the backseat
you were drunk and dreaming
thoughts leaking from your fractured head

blood stains on the seat
of your smoldering compact
the air reeking of spilt coffee and cigarettes

with tears drenching your phone
shorting the transistors
you were petrified, lost, lonely, loathsome

when that brutal last call goes through
and i hear you breathing
the memories become too much to bear:

on a warm august night i took a drive
with one hand holding my head trying to keep my thoughts in
the other gripping the wheel with white knuckles
desperately trying to live through the next turn
i drank the last whiskey from an old bottle
and cast it aside through the open window
imagine the broken glass slash your tires
and your desperate pursuit ends in a twisted wreckage
but when i pull your body from the shattered glass
there's only one thing that i can say...
how many others could you have known?
how many others would you have followed home?
how many others could you have known?
how many others could i have driven home?

from the radio the static drips so slowly that i may as well ignore
the droning signals penetrating the bare surface of my brain
as i stand locked outside in the cold by all of the summer girls
whose grins and tans i just can’t bear

so i’ll drive to some cold beach where the tide will freeze my blood inside my veins
and let my body die; soaking wet and oxygen deprived
and i will lie and wait for my brain to forget all my failed tries
at being happy and at home
but i’m compelled to be alone
the only thing i’ve never known

but with all the wrong predictions to lead me across all of the right roads
into your open arms i’ll crawl to cry these last few days away
and i don’t say these things because i think you need my sympathy
so, darling, just hold me near

but your brutal last call replays in my scarred memory endlessly
i know i long to join you with my fingers tangled in your golden curls
i hear the sirens wail engulfed by crunching steel against stone
and i’m laying in your nest
i can smell it on your breath
the word i never should have left:
“home.”