Now Only

I remember looking around a hospital waiting room
 Full of people all absorbed in their own personal catastrophes
 All reading books like "Being Mortal," all with a look in their eyes
 And I remember feeling like, "No, no one can understand,"
 "No, my devastation is unique."
 But people get cancer and die
 People get hit by trucks and die
 People just living their lives
 Get erased for no reason with the rest of us watching from the side
 And some people have to survive
 And find a way to feel lucky to still be alive
 To sleep through the night
 I wrote down all the details of how my house fell apart
 How the person I loved got killed by a bad disease
 Out of nowhere for no reason and me living in the blast zone
 With our daughter and etcetera I made these songs
 And the next thing I knew I was standing in the dirt
 Under the desert sky at night outside Phoenix
 At a music festival that had paid to fly me in
 To play death songs to a bunch of young people on drugs
 Standing in the dust next to an idling bus
 With Skrillex inside and the sound of subwoofers in the distance
 I had stayed up til three talking to Weyes Blood and Father John Misty
 About songwriting in the backstage bungalows
 Eating fruit and jumping on the bed like lost children
 Exploding across the earth in a self-indulgent all-consuming
 Wreck of ideas that blot out the stars
 To be still alive felt so absurd
 People get cancer and die
 People get hit by trucks and die
 People just living their lives get erased for no reason
 With the rest of us averting our eyes
 ♪
 When I was leaning on Skrillex's tour bus
 waiting for the hotel shuttle in the middle of the night
 I barely knew who I was
 I looked up and saw Orion wielding a club and a shield
 And there you were again:
 Majestic dead wife
 As my grief becomes calcified, frozen in stories
 And in these songs I keep singing, numbing it down
 The unsingable real memories of you
 And the feral eruptions of sobbing
 These waves hit less frequently
 They thin and then they are gone
 You are gone and then your echo is gone
 And the crying is gone
 
 And what is left of this merchandise?
 ♪
 This is what my life feels like now
 ♪
 Like I got abruptly dropped off by the side of the road
 In the middle of a long horrible ride
 In a hot van that was too full of confident chattering dudes
 And the sound of tires receding
 ♪
 Taking in the night air I say
 "Now only."