When I was young I knew a boy, who only loved what he destroyed. He found a toy, that I watched him make his own. It was an iron boat. It sailed the backyard coast-to-coast, but what he loved the most was what he let inside. Cause when the rats get in… through the bowels of the ship, spread their sin, to the hopeful cries of hopeless men who sailed the rising sea.
I started running, love. From the tide, I wasn’t fast enough, searching for a place that I could hide. I was needy, dear, reaching out for what was near, and holding on to what was left to hold. And I got stranded to the braches and the thorns that grew away from you, and the air up here is thin and it’s the same old view of rising seas and iron boats.
And I’m barely breathing, ma. Up here, I’m barely breathing, ma. But I’m still breathing, ma; please know I’m not alone. Yeah, we’re still breathing, our hands all tired and bleeding
and we’re high enough that there’s no way to let go.
Now I’m screaming, “love,” in a thousand other voices scared to face the fall, from the heights that we had reached when we were scared and young, and on the run from an iron boat.
On disappearing coasts: in frightened masses, we hold each other close, as we’re all swallowed by a sea of rats on iron boats.
