Porchlight flickers | The Long Way Home | Track 12-14 | 1970

There was a porchlight flicker on a winter night When dad was late, mom tried to smile like it was fine I watched the snow melt off his coat Before he said a single word And I learned you can say nothing And still feel every hurt There was a calendar that never left the wall Full of pictures of vacations we never took at all And I remember standing small In a house that seemed so wide Wondering why the people in it Didn’t feel like they were on the same side And I tucked it in my pocket That quiet kind of fear That if love could feel like that Then maybe I’d end up here Porchlight flickers, someone’s late again You learn to listen for the truth In things nobody ever says A house can still be standing While it’s falling apart inside Yeah, I learned about breaking Long before I learned goodbye There was a kitchen table with a missing chair Nobody bothered to explain why it wasn’t there Just a joke they’d never tell And a hush they always kept And a kid who stopped believing That grown-ups always knew what’s best So I carried it like luggage Into every love I found That somewhere in the silence Everything would let me down Porchlight flickers, someone’s late again You learn the meaning of the truth By the things that never get said And even when you grow You still feel like that child Who learned about breaking Long before you learned goodbye [Bridge] (soft swell, emotional bloom) I thought I’d outrun shadows But some of them keep pace And sometimes I hear that door When I’m staring at your face And I’m sorry if I’m quiet When you need me to be loud It’s just hard to trust a future When the past still speaks this loud [Final Chorus — softer, more resolved] Porchlight flickers… But I leave it burning bright ’Cause I don’t want to keep repeating Every half-lived, hidden life Maybe love is learning Not to hide and not to lie And maybe I can finally Say more than just… goodbye If you stay… I’ll try to learn the parts I never learned back then…