Rome

A fog settles over Rome,

And his hand slips into hers,

As they stare at the sun setting against grey stone.

The street runs red with blood

As it sparkles in the rain,

But the neon signs draw their eyes away.

And it’s too late for Rome,

But too early for New York ,

And the Mississippi River runs too fast.

But the sunlight’s always there

And it catches in her hair.

It makes him think this snapshot dream will last.

He tells her that he loves her,

But she pushes him away

As the swirling sky above them fades to black.

She wants to let him hold her,

But she’s scared of what’s to come

The thought of it will always hold her back.

And the crumbling granite bones

Lie among the marble stones,

And the moonlight waits until the dream has passed.

He looks down at the moonlight

As it glistens on the bones.

“Oh, what’s the difference?” he asks the barren trees.

They shrug their arms to say

“Don’t ask us”, but they freeze that way

And now they have to wave them in the breeze.

And the wheels fall off the wagons,

And the steeple goes to rot,

And the river flows away and eats the town.

They can try to get away,

But it’s better just to pray

Because the only thing they both know is to drown.

They stand stone-faced in the kitchen

Of their great, rich, empty house

As the sun and moon outside turn sick, dark red.

And they’ll realize that it mattered

When the black-glass sky has shattered,

And there’s no one left to gather up the shreds.

In the end, the wind will cry

In the old, abandoned house,

Because there’s no one left to listen to her now.

She’ll stand there in the bathroom

In front of a cracked mirror,

Singing to an imaginary crowd.

To the rain, it doesn’t matter;

She has an imagination,

And she’s always satisfied to stay,

Dancing on the rooftops as they chip and fade away-

Making mournful music

At the windows where the children used to play.

You can cry, but nothing changes,

And the playground turns to ash

Through the long and lonely winters,

And the pale sunlight that never seems to last.