My Sister's Palace - The Herd

My sister I hear you calling

You feel your world has fallen

Gather your possessions

Muster up your strength and walk away

My brother now I’m pleading

My sister needs to leave now

Let her leave with safety

No need for more chasing again

Sister mother daughter

Not treated how you oughta

Cut off by a river

Someone burnt the bridge

Random acts of malice

From up inside your palace

Wall’s too tall for scaling

Who’s gonna do the saving

I wait for your arrival

To know that you’re surviving

Smoke I see arising

Way upon horizon

Far from other shores

Escaping any laws

Get into that boat

With your hands upon those oars

None of this shit made sense

All of the biblical rules that it went against

What are fences for, to keep the trouble out right?

What if the trouble is in, who will save them then?

And the walls are thin, they hear him go at it again

Quietly sobbing, her brother his holding her hand

They dare not turn on the light

For fear of worsening the fight

So alone and frozen, both eyes open

Every sound magnified in the dead of the night

Their mum pleads and begs him please

Tears wiped away with pyjama sleeves

Life went about its business of bearing its teeth

Big brother being brave gets up

Little sister says stop

In the kitchen a glass drops

As a kid, dad’s so big

Enough to drag em all down in the hole he digs

She is so withdrawn in class

But there’s a world in her head

That they never thought to ask

I doubt she would tell them anyway

I asked her the other day

Are your parents going to the PTA

She said they’d gone away

Something volatile behind her eyes

That makes them nervous

And they haven’t got the strength to ask

To scratch the surface

So she sits in class drawing rowboats in silence

Drifting away from a tower rising from an island

Her brother’s got her back

But he’s not always within range

So she fights her own battles

Girls think she’s strange

No teachers that I’ve asked would even know her name

And would barely notice

If she never even came to class

I wish that her shame would pass

And mine would dissolve as fast

As the dreams of six year olds

She is so much older than her tender years

I wish I could do something to end the tears

Her eyes like a bottomless lake

Deep and clear

I wish I could do something to end the fear