Keep Me

This can't really be what life is all about

Learning how to live just to live without

The travesty's the irony and the irony is you

I've traded in my sanctity for a cheaper shade of blue

And as I surrender to this sunken bed

So afflicted by the tenant in my head

Even now, I wonder how you lay her down to sleep

When secretly I know it's my soul that you pray to keep

But will you really keep me?

Keep me on your porch, on your tongue

Beating in your chest, or coming undone

Folded neatly in the cover of your favorite book

Keep me at a distance in your maze

Fumbling through a contemplative haze, keep me

Or tucked away clandestinely where no one else will look

Where my broken sky reaches to your velvet sea

Will you keep me?

Drowning in the bottom of this empty glass

I pray, God is good and that this too shall pass

Then from the abyss maybe, I'll find a sweet reprieve

When the echo of your kiss reminds me to believe

That you'll always keep me

Keep me under God or on your wall

Behind closed doors forever after all

Or headed south on the blacktop ribbon we designed

Keep me, the mantle of integrity

Investing in something, I'll never see

Keep me at 30,000 feet or in the windows of your mind

In a corner of your heart under lock and key

Will you keep me?

Traipsing on hallowed ground has brought a lifelong sentence

Now living without your breath to fill my lungs will be my penance

And even as I feel, I hope, you feel it just as deeply

And even though you've let me go, say, "You'll always keep me"

Say, "You'll always keep me"

Keep me under God or on your wall

Behind closed doors forever after all

Or headed south on the blacktop ribbon we designed

Keep me, the mantle of integrity

Investing in something, I'll never see

Keep me at 30,000 feet or in the windows of your mind

In a corner of your heart under lock and key

Will you keep me?

The melody you misconstrue on the ocean crashing into you

Or waiting for the man you'll never have the heart to be

In the fervent strains of the tragic elegy

Will you keep me, will you keep me, will you keep me?