Verse 1 You get that far-off look sometimes, like half of you has left the room. I know better than to call you back, I just come stand close to you. Slip my arms around your middle, rest my cheek between your shoulders, and somewhere underneath the quiet you start humming without knowing. I hope you never know you do that. I hope you never learn to stop. Verse 2 I’ve known the kind of wanting that keeps one eye upon the door, where every spark could be a warning and I couldn’t tell which anymore. So I learned to keep some distance, keep a little something back— how to kiss somebody deeply with my fingernails still packed. Then you put your hand around my waist and nothing in me flinched. I leaned in. Chorus Maybe this is what happens when desire meets safety— I don’t disappear inside it, I come all the way alive. I can want you without leaving me, I can let you see me soft. Turns out freedom isn’t distance. Maybe freedom’s choosing closeness when the door was never locked. Verse 3 Put my favorite record on while I’m halfway through the dishes, I’ll leave the water running, pull you close and make you dance. I’ll catch you in the hallway, kiss you senseless without warning, just because I caught you looking like you’d had the same damn thought. And if our fingers touch by accident, don’t move yours quite so fast. I like that second. I like knowing what’s about to happen before it has. Chorus Maybe this is what happens when desire meets safety— I don’t disappear inside it, I get bolder every time. Let your hand stay at my waist now. Let me memorize your mouth. I don’t need to call it forever to know I want you here right now. Bridge I used to think somebody had to tame me before they’d ever stay. Or I’d have to dull the edges, put the wilder parts away. But you never asked. So I kept them. And somewhere between your soft eyes across a crowded room and the way you stay right here when the world comes back around I laid down all my weapons without surrendering a thing. God, what a strange kind of freedom to have nowhere I need to flee. Final Chorus This is what happens when desire meets safety— I don’t become careful. I become fearless with affection. I’ll cross a crowded room because of how you looked at me, take your face between my hands and finish that conversation with a kiss. And twenty years from now, give me an ordinary Tuesday— your fingers tangled up with mine, some old favorite playing, you humming without knowing, me still pretending not to hear. Then you’ll look at me. I’ll know that look. And I’ll lean in the same way I did the first time nothing in me said run.
