Nothing Goes Away

It was somewhere in Zurich Past one, maybe two Smoke on the ceiling And a glass catching you You said time stays closed It shuts behind our names I said maybe the lock holds Because it knows our lines Nothing goes away Not the real things You had that hard way of talking Like mercy had gone home Every word you gave me Made the table feel like stone You said if the past can break None of us survive I watched the ice turn slowly And asked what keeps us alive Nothing goes away Not the real things Years taught me how they frame you How they sell you where to stand How they dress fear up in headlines And place it in your hand They tell you what the world is Before you see the room But truth is smaller than that It waits where bright words don't bloom Nothing goes away Not the real things Not the clever mouth Not the borrowed doubt Not the story sold as sight Just the inward voice Still there in the noise Still there when the room goes white My wife in the half-light My daughter down the hall Rain in the woods at evening The hush after it falls No banner ever held that No theory made it stay It lived before I named it It lived when words gave way Nothing goes away Not the real things So here's to your refusal To the way you cut things clean To the question we kept pouring Into nights that would not lean We never found the answer Maybe none was meant Maybe all we ever touch is The way a moment went Now the room is nearly empty Chair legs, glass, and stain And time is just a waiter Wiping down the rain I still hear you In the clink of ice In the pause before I speak Nothing goes away Not the real things Not the ones that find you When the world grows weak Nothing goes away Nothing goes away Not the real things