Lyrics

Mr. Clipper cranks my shoulder,
says “you’ll thank me when you’re older.
Climb yourself out of this rut. Go downtown
and you get a job. You must be good for something.”

Mom’s emotions: huge and haunted,
any others pass unwanted.
And she tells me I’m a cold fish,
and I stand there mouthing Os,
breathing underwater.

The field was bright and open wide a
nd you stood darkly at the side,
empty and perfectly in the way.

Don’t touch me yet my love,
I’m afraid of fucking the whole thing up.

Over high school’s gleaming hallways,
vaulted arches now and always.
Find the stairwells and the bogs
and the crawlspace way up above the theatre’s ceiling rafters.

But trust the pedants, well I won’t.
I cannot know the things I don’t
but bullshit is as clear as day to me.
So: out with Errol on rainy nights
collecting footage of streetlights,
baying at the houses through the trees.

Don’t touch me yet, my love,
I’m afraid of fucking the whole thing up.

They’re flicking their eyes at me all over town
like I’m some hovering coyote.

Pleasure courses through the wiring.
Talk is windblown, leaves are gyring.
Can I kiss you on the eye,
feel that burrowing, nervous thing twitching then relaxing?

My body screams, I don’t gainsay
this throb I live with day to day
but I am not some cur on the attack.
Love is not some cultural machine,
it’s not some function of the spleen,
it’s nature seeing itself and smiling back.

Don’t touch me yet, my love,
I’m afraid of fucking the whole thing up.
Don’t touch me yet, my love,
I’m afraid of fucking the whole thing up.
Don’t leave me yet, my love, I’m afraid—

Personnel

Damon Waitkus – vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, hammer dulcimer, mandolin, keyboards, percussion
Emily Packard – violin
Kate McLoughlin – vocals, recorder
Jason Hoopes – bass
Jordan Glenn – drums
Thea Kelley – vocals