[ I keep coming back to that ]

I keep coming back to that one line:
Did you hear your favorite song one last time?
So that's a new specific fear
to carry in the back of my throat
and keep me from trying new things.
Sigh and give me one more look
from the corner of your eye.

You want to be unpredictable. You say:
Nobody queues up a song about divorce
to watch explosions in the sky. You say:
No one plays Rise Against at an overdose
but maybe that's just what they need.
Set the outside world just one notch above
the impotent screaming rage of all those louder thoughts;
make sure it doesn't end in three or seven.
I've never had the decency to disavow
what's living in the space my conscience left.

So stop trying to explain how you didn't see it coming.
I'm not convinced. Stop trying to explain why
you're always wearing the wrong clothes for this.
It's always that selective empathy with you
and I'm just never convinced.
You loved it when we sang it.
You loved it when you couldn't help 
but to believe in every word,
so the only thing left is to burn us all alive.

And I still can't fall asleep without the hum
of worn-down tires on an unbroken blacktop road
and the static Alkaline siren of a broken auxiliary cord,
but every time I tell this story I grin and silently wish
your mom would've noted the irony
in the words of Bring Me to Life. I wince
and quietly wish I would've known to define the future
by who laughs first at the funeral home.