Old Gray - Like Blood From a Stone lyrics

So there's this girl, a tall girl, with eyes like honeycomb and jasmine Sometimes she blows cigarette smoke in your face in the break room, and you call that love Not because it is, but because you want it to be Because you're so goddamned lonely, so goddamned unable to handle the ocean roar in your ears when you're alone You tell yourself that the ash in your lungs is as good as a kiss goodnight, and you write poems about the smoke tendrils whispering off her lips How beautiful they are, how like the aching arms of god you always wanted them to be One night, you're tired, so very tired Your eyes as heavy as water You forget where you are, in the break room at a Walmart at 2:30 in the morning and you leave your notebook unattended on the table, left out for anyone in the world to see One of your coworkers picks it up and reads the poems you wrote about the girl with honeycomb and jasmine In her eyes And you panic when you realize what just happened And you panic when you realize what just happened because the boy who picked up your notebook, he's a cruel boy With eyes like shotguns and razorwire He buys you razorblades on your birthday so you can do the job right next time, you f**ing freak And you can't believe that you aren't one Can't believe you deserve to be anything Some days you don't even try to hide the angry marks on your arm, like your skin is a test where you got every question wrong One night, there's a boxcutter with a brand new blade, a stack of cardboard boxes begging to feel its tooth You dig in but something's wrong, the fiber's too gnarled and you can't seem to cut clean. You push, hard as you can feel the stiff tangle of glue give way, and there's blood on the floor, the blade half an inch in your wrist, but you don't feel it The shift manager is in your ear, angry because he has to take you to the hospital and there's a janitor who'll forever hold it against you for staining his clean, clean floor, and there's everyone you work with and their hostile eyes glaring, knowing this was always, always coming along, that there's that cacophony, all those ghosts reminding you of your destiny for failure And there's another blade And there's a bottle of pills, a fifth of vodka, a hospital visit, two weeks of inpatient while your whole family prays for you to get better There's a doctor with blank eyes who never looks at you He's always scribbling things on his clipboard. Everything you say, he documents, even when you're not talking to him You don't smoke, but you still go out for smoke breaks with everyone else on the ward because there's nothing else to do but stare at the walls, and wait for the next group session to start So you hang out in the courtyard, not smoking cigarettes but still befriending those who do And there's a man Maybe ten years older than you, with eyes like roughcut pine and sunset He notices you don't smoke so he tries to stay downwind from you so he doesn't exhale in your face He tells you it's okay, bud We'll get through this and be better when we leave this place than it was when we got here And he's telling you the truth And you believe him One day, the doctor who doesn't look at you comes to your room and tells you that your insurance isn't paying for anymore days, so you're all better now And you leave Your mom picks you up in the lobby and her eyes are the most worried kindness you've ever seen and you go home And you fight off the ghosts, which is easier now than it was before, because now you have a better set of tools today, and your life goes on like it was meant to Like you were always supposed to survive the fight You stop writing poems about smoke tendrils trailing off the lips you once wanted to kiss, or about how your loneliness is so unbearable, because now you write poems about how to stay alive You write poems about the places you feel at home rather than the places you wish you could be One day, you catch a glimpse of someone in the mirror, and there you are Eyes like stubbornness and struggle Like the brick buildings in abandoned factory towns that refuse to fall completely You look at all the scars, the history etched into your arms like a road map of where you used to be Versus the endless possibilities of where you are and where you can go now And the smoke tendrils, once midnight black and swirling above your head, break away, leaving nothing in your view except the sky And it is so perfect And it is so clear