Sea Birds - A Softness (lyrics)

a starling appears

a single hair over your face moves a bit when you speak
something here is too caught to fall from me
all the angles we made
of broken arms and heavy weights

you move soft like a creek
like hands of greater trees
like most of everything
my starling, away with you
and away with you and away

my skin all scratched from loose limbs and i'm freezing
white chalk and bony shore, like a soft star i shake

you move soft like a creek
like hands of greater things
like most of everything
my starling, away with you
and away with you and away

_

weaker fires

believe me when i say i can't be undone
or left like pins or things you can't keep track of
like the small birds i'm untaught,
i know no chances in deep snow
in newer gusts
i linger on like dust in corners
i succumb, a weaker fire

shiver me away like fog across a mirror
i will coil away like last of morning breath
sometimes i am not so strong,
a small indentation in the shore
i won't wear away from waiting,
i will stay unfought and never known.

_

gossamer

gentle love, don't leave me lost,
a greyer stone in every stream,
weathered in lesser hands and trembling.

to arrive like a raining, leaving a blush
in perfect snow. there's feathers in your hair
and guises i keep, and i swear
like tearing leaves to a great oak tree

i cannot remember the smallest things.
i can never speak very clear.
i arrive, a fairweather ghost
throughout the indistinguishable years.

you're tied up like a sheet
and fluttering.
in gossamer of clothes, all blustery.

oh my grace, i wish for it to cling,
like a thread to an eye, like a wind to a wing.
to never lose its way, to remain in the places where i can be.

i'm curling soft away like a silent smoke
with a farewell song to a hearth and a home.

i'm tied up like a sheet
in blueish dreams.
i could never take flight another time.

__

cassiopeia

i woke up to a fever,
a body strained of smoke,
a whispery thin thing.
we flash like all the flames,
i know it's a compromise.

come in from soot and rain
i cannot find a single way

you can't stay caught beneath
sea salt and marrow deep.

we fall away from the wake
of everything of everything

i can't help to be distracted,
to let you separate

i can feel your receding
with all movements you make

wrap me up in cloth and feathers
push me from the coast.

we unravel, thread and sleeve
and everything and everything.

__

i will not

i wish to be a falling thing,
of white dove and feather thin,
to begin to awake,
from blanket and bed,
an imperfect thing.

i cannot stay aglow and new,
no warmth in white fields
a lost layer and wing
to keep my love between,
i will not

i wish to be all concealed beneath
in solstices between
in everything you brought to me

cast me off
like sea and foam,
like new breath
like diamonds you have made
in places you have surely been
my love will not retreat

i'll stay stronger between
the slipstreams, the secret things
in everything you offer me.