Give Her

Lyrics

If I hadn't sold it for its gold, I would give you the class ring I wore when I was still a girl and taking good care of my cuticles. If it hadn't burned in a fire, I'd give you the Valentine from my first kiss–– the boy who grew up to become a preacher, and a Canadian, which seems like a contradiction. I'm not sure why. If I knew exactly where to find it I'd give you the time capsule I buried to open in a million years, I'd shimmy it out of the earth, and say, Here, I made this for you when I was seven. Inside –– a lock of my dog's hair from before he went to live on a farm for biting the face off a man who looked at me wrong. If the tooth fairy hadn't come any of those times, I'd give you my smile and say, You're the reason why I'm gay, and I mean that the old fashioned way as in happy, but also kind of, the other way too. I would give you my name, but I'd rather have yours so when the telemarketers call and say, With whom am I speaking? I could say it aloud, the name I was born with, but didn't know until the night I wiped the sweat off your arms on a dance floor in Oakland, then licked the salt off the length of my hands. Do you understand how sick a person gets licking the length their hands in a nightclub? I didn't leave the bathroom for seven days, which is to say I'd give you my time, my decades even. Don't tell me to be less dramatic. Of course I've loved before, but I didn't give it my all. Mostly I gave up. You asks what makes this different. Why I want to give it a whirl the size of a tornado? Why I want to give it a go at every red light? I just know you makes me feel like I could win the lottery with a parking ticket. I see your lipstick on a coffee cup and feel like I have never known a bruise. And I want to give it my best, and I want my best to be incredible because people take me serious, but I know I am a joke you will always get, your laughter so holy, the hecklers tell me I'm coming up short and I say, great, now I can win the limbo contest. I want to give you all my trophies from the county fair where I won the potato sack race, and the poetry slam where I was the runner-up behind a man who wrote a love poem for pudding (that would be the sweetest gift). When you're down I want to give you my best pick up lines. What's your sign? My sign has historically been STOP but since meeting you I've changed it to MERGE. Darling, when I gave you my heart, I gave my life my word that it would not be the same heart I had given before. I put in, like, a hundred more doors and a record player from a real record store and I put in a skylight that is all yours that day you picked me up and carried me through that airport like my goodbye had no weight. My goodbye has no weight. Right now you are sleeping beside me making a face you would not want to know you're making. Call it the opposite of your mirror face. Call it me bringing home the gold. Call these bed sheets what was sewn from the ribbon at the end of a long race. I don't want to be anywhere but here whispering all your nicknames from every hiding place until I give myself away: Hey Galaxy, Hey Lord of the Butterflies, Hey Grief Thief, Hey Windchime, Hey Adorable Sneezer, Hey Perfect S'more, Hey LifeBoat, Hey Lifeboat, I'm yours.