For Mayor in Splitsville

Funny what you think of after a collapse
While lying in the dirt the first thing that comes back is never quite what you’d have guessed
And if you could have, you probably would’ve said you’d check if all your limbs were intact still and then try to get out

We played house with the neighbors in their basement
Sister made me husband she was older so I did her bidding
I remember once their dad came in said, “you think this is bad?
You don’t know the half” and he laughed

It’s funny what things come back
The first things you see

How he sort of smiled like it’s only a joke but he was lying
There was something else inside of his eyes
All those secrets people tell to little children
Are warnings that they give them
Like, “look, I’m unhappy. Please, don’t make the same mistake as me.”

Why are those old worn out jokes on married life told at toasts at receptions still?
How does it never occur how often couples get burned and end uncertain in splitsville?

Funny what you think of in the wreckage, lying there in the dirt and the dust and the glass
How you’re suddenly somewhere, in the desert, in the nighttime, and it’s getting close to christmas
And then her and that movie voice she uses when she reads
“Welcome to the land of enchantment” from a highway sign
And it’s late so you take the next exit

When that trip ended we came back the rent was due I was jobless
I guess in retrospect I should’ve sensed decay
Then that day, how you said, “I just don’t know” and I promised
We’d rearrange things to fix the mess I’d made here

But I guess in the end we just moved furniture around

But I guess in the end it sort of feels like every day it’s harder to stay happy where you are
There are all these ways to look through the fence into your neighbor’s yard
Why even risk it? It’s safer to stay distant
When it’s so hard now to just be content
Because there’s always something else

Now I’m proposing my own toast, composing my own joke for those married men
Maybe I’m miserable, I’d rather run for mayor in splitsville than suffer your jokes again