now that flint’s risen — you’d tried not to wince in sympathy listening to his heavy breaths, the tactile creaking of his knees — his bed seems bigger. your hands are on either side of you, gripping the edge of the thin mattress in an attempt to keep yourself steady. you feel the drag of the metal leg against the wood reverberate up to the stunted flesh.

why had he allowed you to stay? likely that he just didn’t want to waste the energy arguing. but if he’d said no — if there’d been a hint of pity you could read on those marbled features, you’d have dragged yourself to the farthest end of the ship, cost to your body be damned.

with his piercing gaze turned away from you, you feel as though you can remember to breathe. you lift your gaze from the floor, watching him. a fixed point. does he feel your eyes on his back? is he used to it by now?

“thank you,” you say, low, the words sandpaper grating from your mouth. shifting on the mattress, still seated upright. closing your eyes with someone else in the room is foolish, even more so with him. but sitting on this bed reminds you how exhausted you are. even your tongue feels leaden in your mouth. you keep your eyes on his back as you unbuckle the iron leg and let it drop with a clatter.

he’s not doing it for you, out of any pretense of care. he’s doing it to use you against the crew. him caring for you is no different than keeping a blade clean and sharp for the day he needs it in hand.

it’s a relief to remember this. it’s better this way, when you remember he needs you. how fucking unfortunate it’s become, that you need him too. you know you should be angry, that although your stumble seemingly doused the flames of his ire, your clumsiness only fuels yours. maybe, finally, you’ve become too worn out for anger: a misshapen, sun-rotted husk.

distrust is an awful foundation to a partnership. the water was poisoned by gates' distrust of you. it's what makes your men act against themselves by turning against you. harboring resentment against your quartermaster is choosing to play a game with a losing hand. still, you know there is more to the story he concocted for you. misplaced trust is what got miranda killed. it's what allowed your life in london to be torn apart. you know silver is playing you and you cannot afford to forget that.

this time, you let yourself look in his direction, deathly curious to find out what face he's put on. as always, he is doing the exact opposite of what you anticipate. you'd expected him to fully lay down, but you suppose you aren't surprised by his need to maintain composure, even after being bullied into your sheets. you'd expected to turn and meet his eye. it seems that whenever you look to him, he's already looking at you. this time though, silver's eyes are closed. gratitude looks painful spread across his skin. it looks like exhaustion and starvation and sunstroke. you momentarily find it impossible to tear your eyes away from the sight of silver in your bed, his hair swept out of his face, his skin pale. you can't remember if you've ever been thanked for barking out orders. you can't remember the last time you'd told ordered someone to do something because you cared for their health.

anything you say would only be another excuse for silver to keep himself awake, so you make a noncommittal noise and continue about your day. you hobble to the other side of the desk and breathe out hard when you fall into your chair. getting silver to your bed took more energy than you should've expelled. you use two fingers to prop your forehead up, your arm hiding him from your periphery as you slump over your desk. everything in you wants to keep looking back towards silver. everything in you could use a drink.

the two of you are tucked away from the brilliant streetlights of an american city that had been in its infancy, if that, when you were born. it's still the nineties -- you think. the new millennium.

centuries ago, you'd have feared this closeness. feared it with him. not so ago, you'd buried him in an unmarked grave to cheat death. your death, madi's death. christ. you'd succeeded at one of those goals, but not in the way you'd intended.

he mouths at your bottom lip, nipping hard enough to break skin, spill the stolen blood that floods your veins between your mouths. YOU'LL RUIN ME, he says. haven't you already? haven't you both ruined each other beyond repair, lifetimes ago? like paint on a ruined canvas, or rot on a wound. there's no separating you now.

this time, you're the one sealing flint's gesture of devotion with an open mouthed kiss, taking his jaw in your hand to keep him tilted toward you. you hook the first two fingers of your other hand into the waist of his trousers, pulling him forward. he tastes of blood. he tastes familiar.

there are times you can almost imagine you’ve forgotten him, finally let him slide into the recesses of your memory like blood sliding against your palate. silver has a preternatural sense for when he’s slipped from your mind— always showing up just when you’ve stopped looking for him in every room. you hate him a little more every day, bitterness always growing right alongside that endless affection you harbor for him. comorbidities.

"you’ve looked better," you lie as he breaks the kiss, already getting your hand around the leather swathed scruff of his neck. in the black of night, his eyes are unnaturally shining and his mouth is blood drenched. your monstrous creation, still every bit the conniving swashbuckler of nassau legend. he smells of leather and cologne. you can’t tell if it’s the expensive sort or the shitty bottles bought in gas stations. he wears it well all the same.

there’s a predictability to this, to the two of you, easily anticipated like a well-crafted song. you’ll crash together, meld to one another’s side, and slowly suffocate under the weight of it all. then, you’ll pull apart for air, for months or years or decades, until one of you craves it all over again. history repeating. he is forever burying you, you forever damning him.

flint weighs and skins you with his stare, and your nervous smile is a reflex action, one that spills fresh blood in your mouth. you lick your lips again. you've seen him covered in blood so many times; very little justifies your confidence that a mere split lip will tempt him in the way you fear (hope?). then again, perhaps it is merely a matter of control. when there is blood in the water, sharks are not discerning. you are beginning to realize that flint is a man constantly at war with his savage hungers. but what kind of man has that sort of willpower? what kind of man has that inhuman a drive?

you've never seen the captain at a loss for words before. this is the closest he's come to it, right now, right here, and you watch the rage kindle in his eyes as banking coals. for some reason it makes you want to draw near, a child huddling by a candle flame, and you think of the tales you've heard on the ship of sirens and their beguiling songs, meant to enchant the minds of sailors until they run themselves aground. you'd chosen flint's side over the crew's more than once now, and each time because the rational thinking showed that he was the agent who would most likely lead you to an outcome where you got your share of the gold, enough to walk away. but now you wonder if this -- something, these unnatural urges that seem to haunt your mind when he is near, hasn't affected your rational thinking as well.

some lesser cousin of fear races lightning down your spine, and you've always been susceptible to the thrill of an opportunity. "i wouldn't say scrutiny, captain," you keep your tone light, soothing, genial. the tone you'd used just earlier today in an attempt to dissuade a beating. "it's merely a part of my job, making sure the men are happy..." and now you drop your gaze to his mouth, deliberate. "and well-fed."

it’s a comfort to know you could have your way with him. crash his skull against the deck and lap at what leaks out, rip your teeth into the skin of his neck and drain him dry. it would take so little effort from you. he wouldn’t have the time to react. the crew would be helpless to stop the rampage, the carnage. you could take them all on, you’d likely win.

instead, your mouth curls at his insinuation, throat working to swallow. he cannot be so stupid as to think that hunger is a trite matter to you. no. this is more brazen puppeteering from silver. he’s pulling at loose threads to see what within you unravels. he means to make your nature a bargaining point, a weakness upon which to be negotiated. he has conjured you into an animal, a creature of base instinct and violent whim. an animal is easy to herd, easier to understand. rational thinking, reason— that is a much more difficult thing to anticipate.

if you are to be something less than human, then so be it. but you are no animal. you will never again be reduced to merely a foot soldier and you certainly will not be maneuvered by the likes of silver. there is no longer anyone that can mold you into anything else than the shape you are making yourself. you take a step backwards and fold your arms over your chest. you needn’t speak, your face conveys your displeasure without your tongue getting involved.

silver looks at you like there’s a prize to be taken, if he can only crack through your defenses. all across the globe men seek to move against you: on nassau, on english shores, on this very deck. silver is distracting you from what matters. a beach full of spanish soldiers, gleaming coins laying on pale sands. good practice says the majority of the soldiers will stay back to protect the gold. a small company seeking reinforcements will already be underway. these are the important things, this is where your head should be. how your men — fickle bastards that they are— can think of anything else but the urca gold is beyond you. hal gates had been so brilliant at illuminating the baffling thought processes of your riotous crew.

there are many more important things at stake than your own personal hunger. the tide of need recedes and you with it, head rearing back. your authority has been stripped from you. the whole of your chain of command has fallen apart. time and energy will have to be spent rounding up the mutinous lot of pirates who’ve conspired against you. you’ll have to commandeer your own bloody ship and your only aid will be silver, a man so slippery you can’t fathom putting any weight on him. he’s got too much against you already. this ego of his is a problem you haven’t figured out how to handle: stoke the flame or smother it? if it burns too bright, fire will catch. he’ll get the idea in his head that he means anything, anything beyond his current use. still, silver has an impressive knack for worming his way into situations he has no good reason to be in. he’s done this from under your nose. twice. if he can use that talent to help reinstate your captaincy, he may very well be worth the storm of a headache brewing behind your eyes. you appraise him slowly, carefully, with more levity than just seconds ago.

the captain is on his knees before you, and still you know that the constant push-and-pull between you, that ever-present power struggle, isn't over. you know there's an endgame here, for flint at least, (there must be, there always is) but your focus keeps slipping, back to the spit on his lips and those cold green eyes, the intensity that he watches you with, as though you're a prize ship he's calculating how best to take. that stare does as much for your arousal as the wet heat of his caesar's mouth, and here you are panting, sweat-sticky curls falling loose into your face, trying not to squirm in your seat like a virgin girl.

he has some freckles, ones you would have never noticed without his hair shorn, without him in this vulnerable a position. you resist the urge to touch them, map the cartography of captain flint with your greedy hands. he hums against you, as though he's content this way, and once again you wonder what possible plan, what inevitable endgame, could be worth this for him?

flint does something with his hand, then, and you have to shut your eyes and brace your hand where it grips the armrest, tight, tighter, in an attempt to prevent your hips from snapping forward -- you don't want to choke him. "jesus!"

you're going to come, he tells you, in that same flat, no-nonsense voice he uses to issue orders, and by the time you remember to resent the notion that he knows you so well, you've already come shuddering at his command.

your spend coats his face, his neck, his fucking beard. it's ridiculous -- the picture he makes, the picture you must make, the whole damn situation. but oddly enough, you don't feel like laughing. your chest is heaving, still, and you can't stop staring at him. "where," your voice sounds absolutely ruined, and you take your hand from the back of his head, quickly, burnt. "where the fuck did you learn how to do that?"

he can’t stay silent long enough to catch his breath, nor to let you catch yours. you tongue over your bottom lip, slow, assessing. hunching over him is doing a number on your spine. you extricate the hand that had been wrapped around him and let the other slide from his hip to his knee. thoughtlessly, your thumb glides over the hair at your chin to your lips, slipping into your mouth to taste at his spend.

you unfold from him, the movement straining the fabric at your hips, pressure on your cock making you want to jerk forward. it’s a moment of cyclical need, push-pull, ouroboros. you bite it off at the head, press the hand still shining with spit into your groin. there: easy, maddening pressure, like staunching a wound. your jaw sings from good use, your head swims like you’ve had to much to drink.

"in her majesty’s service." you say, because it is truth enough, because you think it will punch a laugh out of silver and you find you like the way his breath hitches when you knock him off his rhythm. silver is looking at you like you’re insurmountable, a myth, a tale to unravel, instead of the obstinate and aging iconoclast you are. here, you want him to know you as james flint, the man, not legend. it’s a vapid, fleeting thought- to want to be unmade and glimpsed at. you work through it, rationalize it away. there is so little of you silver hasn’t already experienced first hand.

you squeeze around his knee, your own creaking as you shift upwards. you cast long shadows across his torso as you move, drawn to the vibrant red of his lips like sailors of legend are drawn to siren songs.

"am i?" when you speak, you feel the split in your lip. reflexively, you bring a hand to your mouth to catch the blood that follows, a slow drip caught in the space between the thumb and index finger of your right hand. you lick blood off your upper lip, tonguing the broken skin, and then you notice flint's stare. he’s good at hiding his tells. not that good.

or maybe it’s just the getting shot, nearly drowned, and deposed from captaincy that has weakened his resolve. you eye him curiously, thinking of the monstrous visage that had crouched over the body of mr. gates. you haven’t seen that face again since that day, but you think of it, often. how closely it must linger behind the human mask.

a destructive, vicious part of you wants to see just how close. to tempt the beast out.

you smile at him. it’s charming and it splits your lip as intended. your own blood is warm and sour on your tongue. what would it taste like to someone like him?

“certain members of the crew took issue with this morning’s address.” you tilt your head, trying not to act like you’re cataloguing his reactions. “they wanted to make sure i was aware of that.”

it’s as though charydbis herself opened a pit in your stomach, a great whirlpool of need. hunger churns cataclysmically through your guts. historically, the urge is a slow, dull drip, not unlike the consistent splash of water below deck when it rains. some days, it’s a minor torture, no worse than any of your other demons. some days, keeping a handle on your base instinct requires an iron grip, requiring every ounce of your military precision, and still it can feel like grasping at sand. you grip that crawling, desperate hunger in the palm of your hand, and viscious anger spills out. drips through, slides down the valley between thumb and forefinger to the meat of a palm.

you're following the path silver's blood is making, now, a tantalizing crimson river. you have years of experience with your crew’s poorly treated flesh wounds and the thick smell of hemorrhaging deckhands. a small split in a lip should have no affect on you.

perhaps, it is because you are so bloody angry. a deposal, a mutiny—- a mutiny against you? you, who leads the lot of them, bucking and screaming, to a future beyond a poor man’s death? you, who has reached the upper ranks so many times that climbing the rungs feel like perfunctory, superficial act? you, who will rip their power from them, again, and wield them as weapon. you are the death blow to the men who made you, you are the scourge of the society that birthed you. you are their captain because no one else is willing to stoop so low.

or, perhaps, you are riotously hungry because silver knows of you, the lurking monster beyond the man. he knows to face you like a stalked deer knows to tense a seconds before the bullet is shot, knows like prey instinctively knows to keep watch on a predator. perhaps, it is because of what he saw that day. hal crushed against you, broken, silver above you, unctuous, both men unerringly human. and you, so far from it.

there’s legends of what civilized society does to men like you. you’ve heard story of pyres built sky high, a crucifix as an anchor around one’s neck, flames consuming the flesh that consumes flesh. you know what they did to thomas, sentenced him to death after death after death below the sea. the look silver gives you feels inflammatory, incriminating. there isn’t judgement on his features, but a mirror does not judge, only reflects. he can’t possibly fully understand the full extent of what your crime is, yet, he doles out sentencing, probs at your weaknesses. his own blood spills onto his tongue as he goads you. you’d quite like to hit him.

day after day, silver slithers his way further into the crew. he endures his beatings with patience, tends to lick his wounds without the company of the other men. he’s quite good at winning people over when they aren’t looking, a guerrilla attack on their better senses. you are not so easily swayed. after all, you are barely a man. and here he is, laving his tongue over his split lip.

"pardon?" you grit, but it comes out like try me. with the crew milling about, your hostility is clipped, blunted. the men will not take kindly to your angry voice carrying across the deck. not now. not yet.

kneeling at his feet, and yet you feel like you're the one holding the puppeteer's strings. maybe because he allows it -- you wonder how often he's let anyone get this close to him without a blade in his hand. (you think of the line of his body pressing you against rock back at the wrecks, his knife at your throat. it's not that you have a death wish, exactly -- more that flint and the reaper seem inseparable to some degree, and it's impossible to court one without alerting the other of your attentions.)

unlike the other captains, you've never heard of flint requesting the services of any of the whores in nassau. you've heard, of course, of the mythic mrs. barlow, but you have a hard time picturing her. a hard time picturing anyone servicing flint in this way. you want to ask him outright if it's been a while, if only to see what he'll say, but you understand the precariousness of this moment. flint misreading your approach as a ruse to get information could be dangerous -- for the intimacy of the moment, and most certainly for you.

you didn't think yourself attracted to flint, but it's undeniable that something in your veins wakes up at the heat of his gaze -- the entire world of his attention focused on you. how rarely can anyone make that claim, for the man who is always ten steps ahead?

"i'm glad to hear we're on the same page," you say, and lean forward to slide your right hand from his knee up his thigh. you don't take your eyes from him for a moment, watching him the way one might watch a dangerous animal. it's hardly your first time doing a favor like this for another man, although it might be the first time you find your own body interested in its outcome. "i understand you're a busy man, so i'll do my best to make this quick."

his voice is more cemented in your head than half the crew. in the numerous, but fleeting, fantasies you’ve had about silencing john silver, this hadn’t come up. not for lack of imagination, more an excess of practicality. pleasure is never at the forefront of your mind. it is often buried under a mountain of more imperative obligations, more profound considerations. it suits you best to rest all of your men as pawns and nothing more. they can remain disloyal and aggravating means to a crucial end, you can remain aloof and inhuman. of course it is silver, sly silver, conniving silver, who easily awakens a roaring beast of arousal within you.

you wrap your hand around silver’s tanned wrist, grip stern and unforgiving. it’s a death rattle, your ego gasping for the final word. you’re smiling a shark smile still, voice dipping with a mean, mirthful humor. "this," you say, gaze trailing from the wicked fullness of silver’s bottom lip, down to the hollow of his collarbone, to the steadily growing arousal at your groin. "this earns you no favors."

as suddenly as you grasped him, you let go. a few deliberate motions and the knot to your trousers comes undone, exposed without ceremony. beyond your wooden, heavy encounters with miranda, you haven’t been so revealed to someone in nearly a decade. a life spent among seamen has made you impervious to nudity, experience in these matters has previously made you unabashed in your lust. you feel yourself flush anyways. silver’s stare feels leaden. scalding. you feel frozen in this moment, the two of you stagnant, permanent features, carved into reality like statues, embossed into the flimsy fabric of time.

AND WHEN THE URCA'S OURS, WHAT'S TO STOP ME FROM KILLING YOU ANYWAY?

WELL, THAT'S A FEW WEEKS FROM NOW, ISN'T IT? WE MIGHT BE FRIENDS BY THEN.

"fuck you!" unasked for, unwanted, the oath bursts from your mouth anyway, like spitting blood. "fuck you, why would you --?"

flint looks haggard, near-skeletal among the mist and the trees of the island, but you know better than to be fooled. you see the blood on his sword, on his clothes. there are no others left alive who'd underestimated his competence. or his cruelty.

you knew that this moment would come. the inevitable parting of ways, where flint's hunger for his war would drive you and madi into that endless storm. where you'd outlive your usefulness as his tool, his right hand, and you'd end up in the ground for it. like gates, like mrs. barlow, like thomas hamilton. there had been a time when -- no. there had been a time you'd believed that you and he were truly partners. that there was nothing that could come between you, not the english in nassau, nor billy's pitiful attempts at manipulation. that since you'd revealed your scheme to him in that longboat, flint had finally come to see you as an equal. to listen to you, even.

surely that's what mr. gates had believed too, while flint's hands were closing around his neck.

you'd stared into those dark depths, and he'd looked back, and he'd seen something -- how empty you are, how base, your wretched, rotten heart. something. and now, cunning and desperate, he thinks to fashion this insight into a weapon to use, proclaiming love to prepare you for the killing blow? you aren't that naive.

"a lie?" you shake your head, slack with confusion, mounting bitterness. you feel cracked open, unmade. emotion unfold like a play upon your face. all of which you are is open for silver to prod at, to pilfer through. fuck you is his response. the depth of his anger is rattling, though for the life of you, you don’t know why. it’s not like you didn’t know that it simmered beneath his skin. you suppose you hadn’t thought the full force of it would be turned upon you. "to what end? what reason do i have for that?" you need not finish the thought, explain yourself further. he does not have to feel it the same. you care only that this day does not end without silver knowing love for him festers like rot in you.

your rage builds, desperation too. he knows better than to think there is anything other than ruin down this path. his fear fogs his mind, makes him think there can be any advantage in surrender. he knows what comes of playing by their rules: where that put thomas, where that put miranda. the end is finally within reach and he threatens to blunder it all.

"we are on the precipice of having all of which we have worked towards." again, you shake your head ‘no,’ watch him with eyes lidded by misery. for so long, you have felt death nipping at your heels, heard it howling at your doorstep. the only fear that now accompanies the thought of death's blow is this: the monarchy continuing on, breathing even when you are not, the boot of civilization pressing further into man's neck. the end cannot only be yours, it must be england’s too. "giants slain. thousands freed... we will sail back to nassau and find liberation. we will carry madi— and that chest— in tow."

christ, you don’t know how you got back here. having to explain this all. it burns to have to paint this picture again, to point him towards an answer he should be able to find in his sleep. still, you will be the steady, stable ground beneath his feet until he can find his sea legs again. you will salvage this, gather up bits and pieces of comfort like broken glass, until you have collected enough scraps to make rebuild what has been broken. he does not have to believe, not in this mission, only in you. you can still stay the course.

dialogue prompts from thrust: a novel by lidia yuknavitch.

sometimes the story of who you might become comes before you understand it.

it's much easier to study the emotions of another than try to feel them for yourself.

stasis can kill a person.

no one ever becomes anything stuck inside staring at shadows, languishing in plato's cave. you can forget you have a body at all, living that way.

being alive means walking toward death.

i better get back home, before there's trouble.

the holes in a girl have to fill with something.

are you fucking with me?

the whole concept of evil: what the hell is that all about?

my love of _____ is bigger than a lot of things.

i love you. my love will always be in your body.

your grief is killing you.

remember: you can't save anyone.

i have never felt homesick.

i feel hope-sick.

hold as still as a statue.

i've never met a _____ like you before.

perhaps 'monstrous' is just another word for 'magnificent'.

fiction and fact are not at war.

the body has its own calculus, doesn't it?

everyone shifts masks, every hour of the day.

maybe sometimes, death isn't death anymore.

do you suffer when you sleep? does it stay with you when you wake?

i don't know how to talk about what it means to be haunted.

i don't know if that was love, or something else.

there is no word for what we are to each other.

where are your parents? where do you live?

how do we assemble our hearts, to keep us from breaking apart?

when did you stop ____?

there's a world of shit in your eyes.

i'm not allowed to have _____.

i can't remember ever being [age].

i wish i were anyone else's daughter.

no one should ever have to live like this.

isn't 'enforcing freedom' an oxymoron?

i have nowhere to go but down.

i can hear your accent. you think it's gone, but it's not.

i want to kill you, but you're already dead.

no one wants kids like us.

you will never be apart from me. i will always be with you.

tell me how long to kneel and i'll do it. you know i will.

the death of languages is what precedes the death of the world.

it's not understanding i want, it's attention.

remember to stay human.

tell me what you feel in your body.

grief does not exist in linear time.

when do you feel most human?

you're like a secular angel.

it's okay. i know where the story's going.

memory is just making stories.

studying a thing isn't the same as being a part of it.

don't take things that are not yours.

memory is proof that imagination is a real place.

a story can be anything, at any moment, if we need it badly enough.

you don't look crazy.

how is anyone supposed to know who they are, anymore?

even if you are crazy, you're okay.

grief is an object you have to carry over time, like a body.

isn't everything everywhere resting on bones?

the past gets buried, but it comes back when people least expect. like ice melting away, or water rising.

that story took a very sad turn.

not all stories happen with a beginning, a middle, and an end. maybe they never do. end, that is.

nothing is more important than giving children stories they can grab onto and live by.

there is no place that recognizes 'mother' as a form of employment.

we could have been anything. we could, still.

between 'inert' and 'pervert', i choose pervert.

why does no one listen to children?

it's not wrong to want to be loved.

i'm not needy. you're just antarctic.

have you ever had opium tea? i have some at my place. i live very near here.

i'm holding my world together with a bootstring .

i would do it again if i could hold you for a minute .

my life was a storm since i was born , how could i fear any hurricane ?

heaven is not fit to house a love like you and i .

i miss when we did not need much .

we didn't get it right , but we did our best .

when people say that something is forever , either way it ends .

i have never known a silence like the one fallen here .

there's money to be made , whatever is still to come .

i don't want to be anything like this at all .

there are some things that nobody teaches you .

we can celebrate the good that we've done .

if there was anyone to get through this life with their heart in tact , they didn't do it right .

all i needed was someone .

you only feel it when it's lost .

the awful things we do to make our heads feel quiet .

you may never know your fortune .

so far from home to have a stranger call you 'darling' .

i'm a butchered tongue still singing here above the ground .

if i was a riptide , i wouldn't take you out .

knowing that everything ends won't change our plan .

i feel lighter than i have in so much time .

i don't know how the feeling ended .

i know we want this to go easy by being somebody's fault .

how could i fall when i am lifted by every word you say to me ?

if i said that this was drowning , you'd tell me i'm walking on water .

who wants to live forever , babe ?

old and young are welcome to the meal .

how can something be so much heavier but so much less than what it seems ?

we had nowhere to go and every desire to go there .

if i fall , i only pray , don't fall away from me .

all our weight is just a burden offered to us by the world .

getting through still has a cost .

so much of our life is just carving through the dark .

after this i'm never gonna be the same .

some part of me must have died the first time you called me 'baby' .

are there limits to emptiness ?

i wish i was the sunlight , just sitting on the mississippi .

if you need to , darling , lean your weight onto me .

you can't buy this fineness .

some part of me must have come alive the first time you called me 'baby' .

the future's so bright it's burning .

i would do anything just to run away .

i heard once , it's the comforts that make us feel numb .

darkness always finds you , either way .

i know being reckless and young isn't how the damage gets done .

i haven't felt it since then .

i do not have wings , love , and i never will .

one time we would want for nothing , we knew what our love was worth .

i think i'll take my whiskey neat .

i'd still be surprised i could find you , in any life .

i don't need to know where we begin and end .

my name always hits my ears as such an awful sound .

i'm taking no orders , i'm gonna be nobody's soldier .

living the dream , benzos and gasoline .

i wish i could go along , don't get me wrong .

do you think i'd give up ?

i'm infinitely suffering , but fighting it off like all creation .

if you're drunk on life , babe , that's great .

what good would it be on the far side of things ?

i aim low , i aim true and to the ground is where i go .

i wouldn't sell the world , i would hold on for all its worth .

choose between being a butcher and a pauper .

i feel as useful as dirt .

it's the sound of it that brings me here .

when was the last time ?

i want to fade away with you .

whatever keeps you around , it keeps you around .

funny how true colors shine in darkness and secrecy .

when i was younger , i used to guess if there were limits to emptiness .

you know i'm good on my own .

one bright morning changes all things .

i'm sick to my skin , watching the news again .

how could you think i'd scare so easily ?

now that it's done , there's not one thing i would change .

would all things god allows remain above ground ?

i'd walk so far just to take the injury of finally knowing you .

you treat your mouth like it's heaven's gate .

could this be how every day begins ?

i can scarce believe what i'm believing in .

whatever you choose , you lose in the long run .

your reflection can't offer a word to the bliss of not knowing yourself .

the goal i was aiming for was the wrong one .

you're too sweet for me .

your heart , love , has such darkness .

let the sun only shine on me through a falling sky .

i don't wanna choose between being a salesman and a soldier .

how do you sleep so well ?

i wouldn't sell the world for all the gold and sterling .

the street is for the laughter of young women and men .

you can keep a dream in your mind only to find out it's the hope that's killing you .

each time i'm shocked by the light .

july is still coming , just knowing that gets me through .

maybe i have yet to venture out and see the places i dream about .

no closer could i be to god .

what you live in , it finds a way to live in you .

i want to be so far away from sight and mind .

you know the distance made no difference to me .

i thought you were like an angel to me .

i'd move so fast that i'd outpace the dawn .

all my love and terror balanced there between those two eyes .

i'm still glad i met you .