Sea is a Good Place to Think of the Future (Mil años en perfecta simetría)

I grabbed hold of her wrist and my hand closed from tip to tip

I said “you’ve taken the diet too far

you have got to let it slip”

But she’s not eating again

she’s not eating again

she’s not eating again

she’s not eating again.

I ask her to speak French and then I need her to translate

I get the feeling she makes the meaning more significant.

She was always far too pretty for me to believe in a single word she said

believe a word she said.

At fourteen her mother died in a routine operation

from allergic reaction to a general anesthetic.

She spent the rest of her teens experimenting with prescriptions

in a futile attempt to know more than the doctors.

She said one day to leave her

sand up to her shoulders waiting for the tide

to drag her to the ocean

to another sea’s shore.

This thing hurts like hell

but what did you expect?

And all you can hear is the sound of your own heart

And all you can feel is your lungs flood and the blood course

But oh I can see five hundred years dead set ahead of me

Five hundred behind

A thousand years in perfect symmetry

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