Song Lyrics

I sing to you
I sing to you, Geneviève
I sing to you
You don't exist
I sing to you though

When I address you, who am I talking to?
Standing in the front yard like an open wound
Repeating "I love you", to who?
I recorded all these songs about the echoes in our house now
And then walked out the door to play them on a stage
But I sing to you

I picture you
When we first met, you were twenty-two
I drove my truck onto the ferry to Victoria in the morning
Where we met and talked forever in your apartment with evening falling
So I brought my blankets in and slept on the floor right next to your bed
In the morning, barely awake, I saw you standing right above me
Peeling an orange and looking hungry
"Do you want some?", you asked me
And then just avalanched into me with pieces of orange
And weight and kissing and certainty

I remember you a few days later in Tofino
Where we'd driven to play a show you'd set up for us at a surf shop to no one
Then we slept in the back of my truck and got woken up by the cops
And then went down to the fishing boat docks to ask whoever for a ride
Across the water to Meares Island to just get left there for the day
And we did, and brought some food to eat and went through the big trees
Abandoned and in love, totally insane, apart from the rest of the world
We had finally found each other in the universe

Lying on the rocks, waiting for the boat to come pick us up
I read the one book we had with us aloud
With my head on your lap, sinking into you
"Tintin in Tibet" in French
And we thought of devotion and snow and distant longing in the Himalayan air
High and cold, with a bell ringing out

Then right before you died, thirteen years later in our house
I remember, through your gasping for oxygen
You explained that you were thinking about that high, cold air
Wrapping the globe, singing above the mountains of the gods

And, yeah, sure, I do picture you there, molecules dancing or whatever
But I'd rather you were in the house
Watching the unfolding everyday life of this good daughter we made
Instead of being scattered by the wind for no reason
So I sing to you

Phillip Whitman Elverum