[Verse 1] I went to see a dead man With his face still in his skin Two thousand years beneath the peat And somehow there he is They lowered him into the water With whatever rites they knew An offering, or punishment Or something in between the two The bog was neither land nor water Not quite this world or the next A place to give away the things You couldn't simply bury yet And standing there behind the glass I couldn't look away From how a body can be finished And still somehow remain [Pre-Chorus] Outside, the summer wasn't over But you could feel it getting close Green still clinging to the branches Cold already in the wind [Chorus] I was somewhere in between One life and whatever comes after Not gone, not changed, not anything I could put a name to either I crossed an ocean just to find out How far away I had to go Before the life I'd gotten used to Started looking like a choice And I still don't know [Verse 2] There were mushrooms in the forest Feeding quietly on the dead Crocuses beside them blooming While the leaves went brown and red Decay and life together Without one undoing the other Nothing waiting for permission Nothing asking which comes first I'd packed two weeks into a suitcase Crossed a border for the first time Learned the shape of foreign streets And how another morning sounds For a little while my whole existence Fit beneath an airplane seat Then I came home with the strange idea That home was not the same as me [Pre-Chorus] Maybe summer wasn't ending Maybe autumn had begun Maybe both were true together For a little while at once [Chorus] I was somewhere in between One life and whatever comes after Not gone, not changed, not anything I could put a name to either I crossed an ocean just to find out How far away I had to go Before the life I'd gotten used to Started looking like a choice And I still don't know [Verse 3] The dead man kept his fingerprints His eyelashes, his face The world above him changed its gods Its borders and its names There's something almost cruel in that How thoroughly a thing can stay When everything surrounding it Has long since gone away I've wondered what would follow me If I packed my life for real What survives another language What a different place could heal Which parts of me are circumstance Which parts are mine to keep Which ones only look immortal Because I've buried them too deep [Bridge] The bog does not destroy you Not completely, anyway It changes what it has to And preserves what doesn't fade Maybe that's the part that scares me: I could leave and still be me Same old bones in different weather Same old blood walking new streets But staying isn't neutral Time will have me either way There is no version of a life That doesn't rot and rearrange [Breakdown] So I stood there with the dead At the edge of autumn Thinking about leaving Thinking about home Thinking how a threshold Isn't much to look at Until you're standing on one And don't know where to go [Final Chorus] I am somewhere in between What I've had and what comes after Still intact enough to recognize Still restless enough to wonder I crossed an ocean and came back With more questions than before Now the life I'd gotten used to Doesn't feel inevitable anymore I don't know what comes next I don't know what survives I only know I've started looking At the borders of my life [Outro] Two thousand autumns later He is still beneath the glass Summer ended while I wasn't looking. **Something changed.**
