Lyrics Invalids - Antimetabole

In the absence of all the effort sitting up straight
Our eyes learned to return to stares
I offered so little then
Cause that’s what I thought you would have said

Spent all evening long
Debasing back to still retracing our missteps

I concede to relent

It wasn’t “I didn’t mean”
It’s “I misrepresented”
And over again
You said you feel fine

There was no mess we left
I already added back
And still I waited there (there was nothing there)

You offered nothing
And I did the same to protest
(learned to stop sleeping on the floor)
We never held so much in
Everyone was waiting

Waited up watching the ceiling
Wondered if I would see just when the dream started
But I fell asleep

Said you watched the ceiling,
Think ours both look the same?
(it wasn’t working)
Honest, you expected when I lied, “I feel fine”

You came to this conclusion the same way I did
(it was hopeless)
Is the sky so doomed to deny us our shadows?

I was our breath saved
You were arête
I was our plans laid
We were ill-conceived
I was in the way
I was the darkness
Backdrop of your window
Tried to decipher its shape without ever facing it

Maybe there was something holding us up
Something that positioned us where we are
Stuck so close together
So we made no difference

Measured progress by how little we’ve changed
Measuring our strain by the ways we’re still the same
Then, in the absence of each other,
Slowly our shoulders settled
“on our knees, we made it hard to breathe.”