Lyric

I woke up in a square with no number

Just a blank where yesterday should be

Coffee ring on the paper month

Ink bled through last week’s front

Circle dates with hungry eyes

Cross them out before they rise

Sticky notes that lost their glue

Plans that never made it through

Every box a little cell

Where I locked a version of myself

Pages flutter like a flock

Flying out the window frame

All the days that never were

Still insist on saying my name

Broken calendar days taped to my wall

Some of them I missed and some I don’t recall

Broken calendar days slipped through the cracks

I keep running forward but I never get them back

Broken calendar days scattered like glass

Cutting up the present as I try to let them pass

Alarm goes off, I hit delete

Turn the volume off the street

Wear the same old jacket twice

Hope no one will look inside

Messages I meant to write

Fade like numbers in the light

Red-marked circles turn to dust

Underneath the weight of trust

All the things I swore I’d do

When the month was fresh and clean

Now they haunt the empty squares

Like a film I’ve never seen

Broken calendar days taped to my wall

Some of them I missed and some I don’t recall

Broken calendar days slipped through the cracks

I keep running forward but I never get them back

Broken calendar days scattered like glass

Cutting up the present as I try to let them pass

Maybe time is more than boxes

More than ink and tidy lines

Maybe all the broken pieces

Mark the fact that I’m alive

I can’t glue the pages back

I can’t live them all again

But I can hold the tear-stained corners

As a map of where I’ve been

If I let the numbers fade

Keep the stories that remain

Every fractured empty square

Still belongs to my own name

Broken calendar days taped to my wall

Still they draw the outline of the rise and fall

Broken calendar days slipped through the cracks

I won’t tear the present just by trying to look back

Broken calendar days scattered like glass

I can walk between them and not be defined by the past

I close the book but keep the spine

Broken days still count as mine