Andrea Gibson - Staircase lyrics

Across the water
A train moves slow against the trees
Like the bow of a lonely violin

At my side a child
Is begging her mother for milk
The mother is a broken
Staircase with fresh paint
Someday, the daughter’s dreams
Will fall through
And I will turn my chest into an elevator
Right before she tells me
That she’s claustrophobic

For now I say, ‘Listen to that train
It is full of milk’
The mother grabs the daughter by the sleeve
Pulls her down the beach
On the shore the daughter finds a pebble
The color of a wedding gown
Puts it in her mouth, crookeds her teeth
Is no longer hungry

I dream I am a prince
Or a knight in shining, removable armor
My love’s last lover is a sword
I keep falling on

I think too much when I kiss
If love did not exist
I would be so goddamn sane

My poems would be billboards
Suburbia would be enough

I would not have to gut
Myself to find my spine crushed into powder
And brushed on her cheekbones

My hair would not be a hummingbird’s nest
My mind would not have to
Move so fast to rest

I would not be in North Carolina
Tearing flowers from the motel flowerpots
Searching for a love-me not

I can drop like a guillotine
On my own galloped chest

It is incredible what kind of mess I can make
With a nine-hour drive and an unanswered text

Yes, that's me, crying to the tollbooth man

I say, 'In the ghost town of our love
There is a player piano
Trying to prove it can make music
Without being touched my fingertips
Miss her so much’

He hands me no change

Tells me there’s a Laundromat
Down the highway that is also a bar
I could make a clean getaway
I could fall of the wagon
And catch a freight train
Right to officially, clinically insane

I could at the very least, wash my clothes
So I could for once in my life know
What it’s like to have control
Of the spin cycle

What’s it’s like to know
What the yarn knows of sweaters, you know
How to hold myself together

And love, I know, it is not sexy to make-out
With someone who so constantly
Has their foot in their mouth

But remember, I am also the one who told you
I want to feel you like the
Lifelines on the palms of Jesus
When the nails went through
I want to make popcorn with you
With the lid off

Yes, that’s sexy talk yes, I’m freaky
Yes, I heard the bartender say

It is not holy water if
It doesn’t burn going down and you are hot
Enough to keep me sober
On a Saturday night on Bourbon Street

I told her, ‘You have a heart of gold
I am kneeling in your bloodstream
Panning for the only thing that
Has ever felt like home’

If this drives me crazy
Make sure the straightjacket comes in purple
So Prince will sing her favorite
Song as I sleep

So that rifting guitar, is all she ever hears
A runaway train on every string
Her name on my mouth
And a falling star, that never once fell
We never fall we always jump

We always jump