Song For Molly

Molly's sitting on her bed

It's Sunday afternoon

Radio's playing outside

TV bleeds from the next room

Antiseptic in the air

Nurses laughing down the hall

Crooked feet in crooked shoes

Her wooden cane against the wall

It's Sunday but her Sunday clothes

Are packed away somewhere

She doesn't need them anymore

Nothing to look her best for

I'm thirteen, I'm with my mother

She doesn't know my name

I remind her I'm Lucy

But she looks at me the same

Like I'm a stranger she should remember

From a place she can't return

We've only just walked in

She says we've stayed too long

Too proud to be remembered

As a mother without a home

Oh, it's time to go

Oh, it's time to go

It's a dirty trick

This growing old

We walk the halls anyway

My mother holds her arm

She's pleading with us to leave

So we walk her to her room

And we drive through the old neighborhood

The grand homes of the South Side

So many are abandoned now

So many lifetimes locked inside

And at the dinner table

It's my parents and me

I sneak looks at the two of them

To see what they need from me

And later she calls me over

Where she sits alone

She's polishing a silver ring

I've never seen before

She says this was Molly's

It was her mother's ring

I'm keeping it for you

As she kept it for me

Oh, it's time to go

Oh, it's time to go

It's a dirty trick

This growing old

I'm told Molly was so proud to have

Another baby girl

Her only granddaughter

But I don't remember

This is what I remember