A Hard Way to Learn

I will tell you…

I will tell you (Laughs)
Boy oh boy

It’s a hard way to learn

I’m sure you’d rather be next to him right now

Posting convictions in his ear

About what he should

And-should-not

Be doing

Totally understandable

But the problem is, you see

You fell in love

With a man who can’t be loved

Who takes love

And rolls it over

Until it’s flat

And won’t do nothin’ for nobody

You can’t make a case to somebody like that

They already found themselves guilty

Long before you got there

So now you’re wondering

If I feel bad

That I was stop three

On a six-stop night

Well—

Not really, honey

Not really at all

What I wanna know is

Are you gonna hit up the other five houses too?

See what they have to say

For themselves?

Because you do that

And one of those fools

Is gonna take a couple of your teeth out

Just because they feel like it

I’m not much of a fighter

I’m into passive resistance

So here I am

Sitting

Drinking
Offering you a smoke

Passively

Resisting

(Laughs)

Oh honey, I sympathize with your calamity

You could just love somebody easy

But where’s the fun in that

Instead you found a magic trick

You couldn’t learn

And you’re looking at me

Thinking I know how

To bring the rabbit back

Let me tell you something, darlin’

We’ve all been fooled

By the same trick

But the thing about me is—

I’m not trying to figure it out

I don’t know wanna know

How he does

What he does

I got my own magic

And you got yours too

You just don’t know what it is yet

You wanna know what mine is?

I can see into the future

One day, that man’s gonna be shot

By some woman

Who’s had enough

It won’t be you

But it’ll be somebody

One shot, through the heart

And that’ll be the end of him

I told him what I saw

But he brushed me off

Like I was dust on a book jacket

I told him it wouldn’t be long

Before I’m seeing

Becomes what I see

Blood soaking through a nice tan shirt

Hot, so it must be summer

Dark, so it must be nighttime

Cicadas and beer bottles

A song from 1991 playing on an old jukebox

I gave him all the information

But he didn’t want to hear it

Probably because he knows

He’s going to go barreling into that future

The same way he’s been dashing away from his past

Blind and scared

Blind and scared

And of a little bit of him thinks I might just be

Some crazy bitch

But he’ll learn

He’ll be laying there dying

Thinking, Shit, that bitch was crazy

But she was right too

And you know what?

That’ll be a hard way to learn

How about you, honey?

You wanna know what your future is?

You wanna know what music I’m hearing

When I look at you?

What kind of beer I’m smelling

On the breath

Of the man who stops your heart?

What he’s wearing

What you’re wearing

What the name of the girl is next to him?

Or how about his name?

You want his name?

(A beat)

Yeah, I didn’t think you did

Some things you can’t hear

From some woman at a bar

Whose cigarette’s almost out

Some things you just gotta learn about

On your own