Red Velvet Stalemate

Spring 2020

You're not like the rest

I can't forget about you

It's like you were some big book

and you'd only let me read a few chapters

I think of those unread chapters

10 years later

I wonder what notes

I would've written in the margins

of your library book

You had so much music

Terabytes of emotion

Singing words you can't say

While you danced alone in the corner

And I sat in front of the TV

My right hand on the screen 

Fascinated by his fingers

You tell me to get off the floor

I tell you to quit dancing alone

And we had a red velvet stalemate

in that apartment near South Congress Street

Every album is a door

I remember you with so many songs

I feel like a bird

Waiting on bread crumbs

So I could understand you better

By another man's words

You always punished me

For getting too close

For reading your lyrics

I hear it's

The quickest way to get exiled

Off the island of Captain 'Go It Alone'

And why won't you talk to me?

It's the hardest part of it all

This forced silence so

You can remain in control

I can move on and

I can move away and

I can change and grow

But I can't unhear

or unsee or unknow

And I could never make you stay

You had so much music

Terabytes of emotion

Singing words you can't say

While you danced alone in the corner

And I sat in front of the TV

My right hand on the screen 

Fascinated by his fingers

You tell me to get off the floor

I tell you to quit dancing alone

And we had a red velvet stalemate

in that apartment near South Congress Street