Lyric

Seven minutes

If I walk them slow enough, maybe you answer

Sadness teaches me how to forget your voice—

At the same slow pace the hair on your head grows

Mine just turns rough; I don’t even shave

Walking seven minutes without knowing why

Streetlight breath, a pocket full of nothing

The key in my palm like a small, useless moon

Slow steps, slow loss—

Your name thins out in the air

No coins for a sweet cheap drink from the corner store

Never once earned my own fare just to go and see someone

The wind is light, but it presses on me—

Like a debt I’ve carried since before I could speak

The vending hum, a ghost of sugar and aluminum

My hands rehearsing pockets that never pay

Lately, my dreams are cruel in a quiet way—

You never appear, not even as a blur

“Maybe I’ve lost the right to whisper ‘I love you’ to you.”

No—truth is, I never had it

I just kept turning my face from the fact

And here I am

Spilling another song that leans toward sorrow

Knowing you’ll never hear it

But still aiming every note at you

Seven minutes—

And still, every step I take writes your name in the streetlight

Seven minutes, seven minutes

I walk them like a prayer I won’t be given

Your hair kept growing through the weeks I slept badly;

My mirror kept its small, unshaven truth

I count the cracks in the pavement like loose seconds

Saving none, wasting all that remember you

I pass the corner where we once bought rain

And buy nothing, like always

If I ever had a right to say “I love you,”

It was borrowed light from a window at night

I turned my face from that small, exact truth

And the room turned, too

And here I am

Spilling another song that leans toward sorrow

Knowing you’ll never hear it

But still aiming every note at you

Seven minutes—

And still, every step I take writes your name in the streetlight

If I’m honest—

I’m not singing to be heard by the world

I’m singing because I don’t know

How else to keep you alive in me

And if this is pathetic

Then let it be pathetic in your name

If there’s a right to love you

I only ever wore the shadow of it

Here I am

Spilling another song that leans toward sorrow

You won’t hear it—

Still I aim every note at you

Seven minutes—

Each one a quiet room with your chair missing

And here I am

Spilling another song that leans toward sorrow

Knowing you’ll never hear it

But still aiming every note at you

Seven minutes—

And still, every step I take writes your name in the streetlight

Seven minutes

Home is only that long tonight