Written Once

I wrote it once, on the page I never finished, [Verse 1] For the notebook you stitched with the crooked spine, that leaned on the shelf like it knew its place — for the number you wrote on my wrist in ink, so the road could always call me back — for your rule in pencil: send the bad version first — and for laughing the way you did, a breath too soon, before the joke had even learned to land: thank you. Item by item. All of it stands. [Chorus] I wrote it once, on the page I never finished, in the hand I use for true things only. I wrote it once, and I won't write it twice — some pages you don't get to practise. [Verse 2] And I'm sorry — I'll say it straight, the way I talk: for the day the news came and I still played the show, smiled at the curtain with it sitting in my coat. For the mornings after, all of them, in a row, the kettle, the quiet, the not-saying-it. For every word I saved up "for later" — later was a drawer. I knew it. I let it fill. [Chorus] I wrote it once, on the page I never finished, in the hand I use for true things only. I wrote it once, and I won't write it twice — some pages you don't get to practise. [Bridge] And the years will do their ordinary work. Somebody's daughter, in somebody's yard, will grow up tall in the light you won't stand in. I won't dress that up. It just goes on — the world, keeping its side of the bargain. [Final Chorus] I wrote it once, on the page I never finished, and your book is back on the family shelf. The number's long faded off my wrist — I still know it by heart, and I keep it there. So I set the pen down on the last clean line. There's first light on the sill, and I don't say why. The rest of the page stays white. The room is quieter. It isn't lighter.