Sixteen

All the paths you took to get you here All the ones you didn't take The road they told you rolled up Straight to heaven's heavy gate Find Saint Peter at the doorway In a tollbooth waiting And I climbed the steps behind you in anticipation To see my future from the rooftop up a spiral staircase Barely twenty watched my whole life in a foreign nation Then chased that fading dream away I slept for days and days When I woke up in your apartment Could you see it on my face? That I didn't recognize the room That I thought it was some neighbor's place? Twenty-five with all my errors piled I laid my head between your knees and Fell asleep that way for weeks When I woke up on Lunar New Year It was twenty-twenty-three Rabbits running in the alley Lion dancing in the street And past the teeth on every one I saw my old self taking shape Hovered ghost like in the flames And in the smoke he slowly dissipated If you could go and take your pictures off the wall Would you do it? Would you take them all Down fast? Try to break, take them all into your arms And throw the errors out? If you wanted to Would you take them all down? (Would you change it all? Try to change it all?) Would you make preparations for a funeral? Stage it how you want it go, if you knew that you- Would you take them all down? Would you change it Tell the story how you wanted it told? (How would you want it to be?) (Where would you want to end up?) Where did you think you'd end up? On the pavement Spent drunk in the basement Then sleepwalking all through the house? Nights on the rooftop With strangers, the places That sunrise we watched and went blind A mansion in the Hamptons A quiet suburban street A Highrise in Manhattan Twenty children at my feet Where would I be if I had never gotten better at all? Who would I be if you decided not to wait up for me? Who would I be? Take the pictures down from off the wall I want to see it all Remember everything I take the pictures down The days in our apartment That skylight in the bedroom The blooming window garden My life in color with you I keep the pictures hanging I'm writing captions out I'm framing every single moment Going forward Where would I be if I had never gotten better at all? Where would I be if I had never gotten better at all? What would they say if there's a heaven after everything? What of my life has brought me I keep the pictures hanging (I keep the pictures hanging)