American Coffee

My mother came to the city at 21

And had no choice but to drive to work

She said, "I cried in the car every day until I didn't"

And when she had me, the midwife

Looked her in the eye and said, "Poor baby, you're so scared"

I guess I was born anyway

What is a home but the place you'll be dying?

What's far away but places to lose yourself?

Myself, I had the choice

I left for Northbridge, Fitzroy, Astoria, anywhere but home

I moved in with a group of nurses in Collingwood

They looked mе in the eye and said, "A concеpt is a brick

It can be used to build a courthouse of reason

Or it can be thrown through the window"

Who would I have been if I'd never gone there?

And who is she who faces her fears?

I panic behind the wheel, I have sworn to drive again this year

I was taught how but I never taught myself to believe

Or to run, or cook, or care, or even love

All the normal things, I went away

I don't know them, I went away

I wonder who I'd been if I never got to go

Get a fine arts degree and American coffee

With irrelevant quotes from French philosophy

And we'd meet in the climax of a clever sci-fi movie

But that would just be, but that would just be, be stupid

I give you that time at the cinematheque

I was watching La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc while having a UTI

I stared into Jeanne's face, suffering in black and white

I'm sure I saw her wink at me

Then I peed blood in the lobby bathroom

The blood colour seemed so insanely alive

Too alive, too alive to be just mine

And I felt I crossed paths with a version of me

A concept, you could say, but not she who stayed behind

She who quit everything, music and identity

Just left a little blood behind and a fever for me to share

There is no courthouse here and no window, no bricks are thrown

But underneath, underneath us, underneath, underneath us

The floor tiles wow and flutter

They wow and flutter

In this moment, in this moment she has quit