Call

[Intro instrumental] [Verse 1] The distance is kinder than being too near, It protects us from what we could never sustain. In the speaker of phone you are perfectly clear, But the presence of skin is a sharpening pain. [Verse 2] The map is a safety we should not ignore, With its borders and miles and its cold iron tracks. If you stepped through the frame of my heavy front door, We would crumble like paper or melting like wax. [Interlude instrumenta] [Pre-chorus] Your breath in the wire is as close as a shirt, It is steady and warm as a resting hand. But the walk to the station is paved with the dirt Of a plan that we never could quite understand. [Chorus] I can handle the silence that comes with the cost, Of a cable that stretches across the divide. But the flavor of magic is readily lost When the body is standing right here at my side. [Interlude instrumental] [Verse 3] In the buzz of the signal I keep you alive, Like a secret that stays in a locked-away drawer. But we wither the moment the trains arrive, And we do not recognize who we are any more. [Verse 4] The pot on the burner is starting to steam, And the window is covered in film and in frost. It is easy to stay in the lines of a dream Where the count of the minutes is never the lost. [Interlude instrumental] [Bridge] If I reached for your sleeve it would turn into smoke, It would scatter like ash on the rug in the hall. So I hang on the word that you recently spoke, And I stare at the cracks on the plasterless wall. [Final chorus] Let the battery drain until the signal is weak, Let the satellite spin in its lonely patrol. It is only the air and the nothing we seek To maintain what we cannot entirely control. [Chorus reprise] And we stay on the line until the morning is grey, With a thousand long miles of the forest between. It is better to keep you a lifetime away, In the light of the glow from a flickering screen. [Outro instrumental]