View From Our Bedroom Window

You are sleeping in the room alone now
You are restless in the night
When the lightning from the storm strikes, you shine
For a second in the light, I wait
For a moment when the weather breaks
I can feel you in the mattress shake
I can see the way an old pain haunts you
Mourning falling into frame
You stayed down

I face my failure in the way I escaped it
In the crumble before a break down takes
Like a rapture in the night, you fight hard
I face my own pain the way I embraced it
In the bedroom with the door locked tight
Like a coward when the flash burns bright, I'll hide

Your hands burnt on the torch’s flame
Fighting the path away
Brighter than lightning and burning, striking the ground
We spent summers awake
We shake at shadows shapes
The wind, it rattles our dreams
We're always turning around

You were standing in the doorway
You were staring in the flames
How the fire from the house next door mixed
With the colours of the cop cars I saw
Neighbours gathered in the alleyway
In the summer, in the heat, I wait
For a wind that I can chase your pain out
Gather fire from the flames, I wait

Nights we've all shook
Any noise that got in our room
Rattled on the floor like shells scattering
Or like hail falling on the hood of our car
Do you remember that drive south?
Coast-bound, just us two
Savannah west in the mirror and winter in rear-view, burning
How the storm fell so harshly we felt swallowed

And traffic stopped before and behind us
Hard rain and sheets grey and unbroken
Hazards flashed dimly in all directions
Like small satellites or like lighthouse beacons
We turned the radio off
I gripped the wheel tight when the storm burst
And clouds split suddenly open to the sky
All the colours that were in us, dumbstruck
With love and terror and both
As if before us stood temples ancient and terrifying
The light refracting truth to see death and life and all things

Your hands burnt on the torch’s flame
I was the last to change
Strike me like a lightning bolt and burning me down
Your hands burnt on the torch's flame
I was the last to change
Strike me like a lightning bolt and burning me down
The wind rattles our chains
We shake our fists at the pain
We shake at shadow shapes
We cup our hands in the storm
And watch our houses burning
We catch the rain to fight it