My Time Outside The Womb

                                G
The first thing you see is the light.
           C
Then, you focus on a man in a mask with a knife
      A                         C                                     G
as he cuts you away from everything you thought you knew about life.

                                             G
And now you’re in your mother’s arms, wrinkled and wet.
                               C
You’re gonna spend the rest of your life trying to hard to forget
         A                          C                                                    G
that you met the world naked and screaming, and that’s how you’ll leave it.

    G
In Riverside Hospital,
                C
this was on a July morning, with a push and a pull,
             A                              C                          G
and this is how I found out I wasn’t quite so invulnerable.

C                     D                 G               A
   It put the fear of God in me when I heard my daddy say,
              C                    D
“one mistake is all that it takes.”

G

                       G
I ended up at Central School, 1993,
                  C
and met a certain kid named Sarim at the library.
                  A                       C                      G
He said, theyre aint nothing about this place thats elementary.

                        G
I learned to play the guitar in the seventh grade
               C
in order to convince everyone I was a renegade.
                      A                    C                                  G
That’s when I learned, in Glen Rock, everybody calls a spade a spade.

C                       D             G                         A
   I couldn’t fool anyone. I couldn’t even fool myself.
         C                    D
I was just another book on the shelf.
                      G
Nothing else.