Goodbye My Lover
I sit starring out the window from the kitchen table.
The clouds pass by, I’m tired but I’m able.
My prayers these days don’t start with why. When a song the radio catches my eye.
Well, not my eye, but somewhere much deeper,
A memory I’d forgotten, the feeling though a keeper.
Goodbye My Lover, James Blunt is singing.
Suddenly I’m twenty,
But the alarm bells aren’t ringing.
I’m back in that cell, in Lancaster Farms,
A young lad alone with his fears and his charms.
A look out a window trying hard to be strong,
the tears came falling, along with the song.
And I want to reach back through the years to that boy,
Tell him there’s love still, there’s laughter and joy.
That one day he’ll sit at a table like this, With a wife and a family, a life he once missed.
But I can’t reach through time, can’t unlock that door,
Can’t take from his shoulders what he carried before.
I can only sit here, with my head hanging low,
And remember the boy that they didnt know.
The radio plays on. The kettle clicks.
The world carries on with its everyday tricks.
And my family are sleeping, my life is my own,
Yet for a moment, that cell feels like home.
Not because I miss it, not because I want to return,
But because some old memories ache, some songs they burn.
And I feel for that lad, so pain ahead,
And the tears he swallowed, and the prayers left unsaid.
Then I whisper a prayer, though my voice barely stir
Lord Jesus Christ, for that young man be near.
For the years may have passed, and the boy may have grown,
But have mercy when its steep till you bring back home.
And that song reaches its ending. I sit in dim light,
Forty-one years old, this tear carries might.
I look at the life, I once thought was a loss
And I thank the Lord for the nails, the blood, and the cross
☦️
