LYRIC FOR SALE

By Ph. Ness

We Live Around What’s Left

Americana

Verse 1

Six months since the night the bowl came down.
Blue ceramic — a wedding gift — above the sink.
The pieces are still there. We swept the floor,
washed it twice, put the mugs back underneath.
Two mugs dry beneath that shelf each morning.
Neither of us looks up.
We move around each other like we always have.
Careful. Not angry. Careful.

Chorus

The fragments of us still on the shelf.
Neither one of us moves them.
The promise bent — it didn’t break.
We live around what’s left.

Verse 2

I opened the drawer for a dish towel.
The receipt was there beneath the batteries —
Cedar Falls. I already knew every line.
You were watching from the doorway.
I closed the drawer.
You went back to whatever you were doing.
Neither of us said a word. We know how.

Chorus

The fragments of us still on the shelf.
Neither one of us moves them.
The promise bent — it didn’t break.
We live around what’s left.

Verse 3

You left the porch light on for me last Tuesday.
I bought your coffee, the dark one, without thinking.
Both our names are still on the grocery list —
your handwriting, then mine.
I put your clean clothes at the foot of the bed.
You folded the dish towel back the way I like.
The crack’s still there. I don’t know what we are.
Something that stayed. That’s what we are.

Bridge

The night the bowl came down,
it struck the floor and broke across the tile.
You knelt first. I brought the broom.
A shard cut one thumb.
We wrapped it in the blue dish towel.
Nobody remembers whose blood was on it.
We both stayed in the kitchen.
We finished sweeping in the dark.

Final Chorus

The fragments of us still on the shelf.
You reached for one this morning.
You held it to the broken rim.
It almost fit.
You left it there.

Outro

Coffee cools beneath the shelf.
The bowl stays where it is.
We move around it.
Same as yesterday.
Same as we do.