Armchairs - Andrew Bird

I dreamed you were a cosmonaut

of the space between our chairs

and I was a cartographer

of the tangles in your hair

I sighed a song that silence brings

it’s the one that everybody knows

oh everybody knows

the song that silence sings

and this was how it goes

these looms that weave apocryphal

they’re hanging from a strand

these dark and empty rooms were full

of incandescent hands

and awkward pause

a fatal flaw

time it’s a crooked bow

oh time’s a crooked bow

in time you need to learn to love

the ebb just like the flow

grab hold of your bootstraps

and pull like hell

‘till gravity feels sorry for you

and lets you go

as if you lack the proper chemicals to know

the way it felt the last time you let yourself

fall this low

time

oh time

it’s a crooked bow

time’s a crooked bow

fifty-five and three-eighths years later

at the bottom of this gigantic crater

and armchair calls to you

yeah this armchair calls to you

and it says that

some day

we’ll get back at them all

with epoxy and a pair of pliers

as ancient sea slugs begin to crawl

through the ragweed and barbed wire

you didn’t write you didn’t call

it didn’t cross your mind at all

and through the waves

the waves of a.m. squall

you couldn’t feel a thing at all

you’re fifty-five and three-eighths tall

time