Elbows

Lyrics

I get panic attacks when I'm being looked at I get hungry in crowds I eat potato chips to crunch away the noise The noise is not noise if I am the one who is in control of the loud I'm a lot three years old You can't see me if I close my eyes You have no idea where I am I guarantee I am somewhere thinking about the people who choose the middle seat on an airplane When our elbows touch my heart goes so fast I dare myself to not pull away It's the point of life Don't let anyone tell you different The point of life is increasing the amount of time you can get your elbow to stay My joy likes to run from my body quick as it can I've been practicing holding it The way you'd practice holding your breath at a public pool I can do about half a lap before my panic freaks out and its little red whistle My panic is not a lifeguard but you can't tell my panic that My panic googled how to give CPR to yourself Despite how it might look I was raised right My father is a good man When I asked him why he stayed three years in Vietnam He told me the army offered him a free trip to France if the stayed the extra year When he left the room my mother said no Andrea that is not true Your father stayed the extra year so his brother wouldn't have to go When I came out to my parents they took me to a psychiatrist to get my head fixed The psychiatrist said I am not responsible for my family's happiness But my father's brother is a happy man It was a lot to lose I never nightmared so much as a I did those years I was at a Catholic school playing basketball for the Lady Monks I was taking environmental science from a nun who did not believe in dinosaurs What I knew about extinction Was that my family stopped calling And I started working demolition And volunteered to run the jackhammer through the asbestos tiles on the building's floor When I finally got my degree the only job I could find was as a telemarketer selling a product called Score a cologne guaranteed to get any man laid in the club There are times when your life is not on the up-swing And no one was saying it was gonna get better When they said straighten up man, they meant straighten up but some of us can't help but jackknife out of the net Some of us know love is not the only closet we were told never to come out of There is also the closet of grief The closet of sorrow The closet of panic, of terror, of rage The closet of awe, and want, and bliss Every honest grit that we feel This world asks for a stencil instead for the chatter of cordial manufactured machine And yet here we are daring our elbows out-noising the noise Forgiving the past for not being the past making no excuses for wanting to feel too much There is no tragedy that doesn't knock the wind out of us But we, we follow that wind where it goes Running with our wind chimes dragging behind us like we were just married To knowing the breakdown is what trampolines the bouncing back Call my ring finger, whatever I use to flip off the rules of how my feelings are supposed to, supposed to, supposed to act I am always a groom with a heavy, heavy heart Just learning to pull my own weight Without wishing my past weighed less than it does Learning brave is a hand me down suit from terrified as hell Dress me in whatever will get me to the door of my heart Get my faith in us under your skin Hold my stubborn in the palm of your free Tell whoever is sitting beside you tonight Thank God you never got braces Your bite looks like a city skyline I bet you leave that kind of mark on this world