From the recording The Troth Sessions
Recorded 10-14-02. A furtive contemporaneous attempt to imitate the newer country songs of Declan macmanus (Elvis Costello). About changes that occur in a relationship which out run whom you once were when the relationship began. The beginning of the end of things, the end of things as they were.
Lyrics
The One You Love
I don't tell fortunes
My days reading tea leaves are through.
But I don't have to gaze at your palm
To know what you’d like me to do.
How we got here we'll never know.
The future is a prison and you back in slow,
When the bars come down over the windows
You're caught by all you thought you needed to do.
I doubt this is something a free man would choose
You've held me 'til your knuckles were white,
And you wonder how your fingers got bruised.
I've hardened my touch. I've pulled out the crutch.
Excuse me if I fall too much,
But I've stood trial already convicted
Of taking everything we had to lose.
So don't bother dusting for fingerprints;
You don't need to find even one.
You can ignore the latencies,
I'm standing here holding a smoking gun.
The vows we've sewn wait by the telephone.
Is it the governor's call or the midnight walk alone?
You were the last one I thought of
When I killed the one you love.
They say that the last Ice Age went on too long.
We could stand and watch the next glaciers pass
Before either of us admits we're wrong.
If I could just remember what you saw in me.
If I knew what the future used to be.
But you just stay hurt and angry
And all I do is write these songs.]
So don't bother dusting for fingerprints;
You don't need to find even one.
You can ignore the latencies,
I'm standing here holding the smoking gun.
They pack the court to come and see
The talking corpse that once was me.
He was the last one I thought of
When I killed the one you love.
We were the last one I thought of
When I killed the one you love.
-May 1987