The Ride from Syracuse

If you can get her to talk
You can probably get her
To talk about it

If you can make that happen
It should happen
Sometime on the ride back
From Syracuse

If you can find the right song
On the million song Ipod
Then you can play it
And hear her soft breath
Turn into a light voice
Trimming the edges of the lyrics

If you can persuade her
To bring up what happened in Boston
And why she doesn't want to go back
And why she's headed to Maine instead
Where she can sit on a lake
And try not to fall in

If you can ask without begging
If you can comfort without smothering
If you can touch without touching
If you can do it
You should do it

But you have to do it
On the ride from Syracuse

Because once you get back
You'll be back in a place
Where you are who you are
And she is who she is
And you're stuck in your assignments
As two friends who barely know each other
And who wouldn't be right together

If you can convince her to eat
At the roadside diner you stop at
Where the turkey club isn't so bad
And the pie is actually really good
And there are more silent truckers
Than there are happy families

If you can tap your fingers near her plate
See if she finds this silly enough to laugh at
Your attempt to drum out the song she was singing
In the car on the way back from Syracuse

If you can get her to laugh
You can save her
You can save every part of her
And stop the slipping
Dripping pieces
Drenched in uncertainty
As they fly through your eyes
Into the present
As it turns into past

If you can remind her
That people are malleable
That they shift slightly
But that they DO shift

That they're more clay
Then brittle coastline
And crumbling pillars
Of empty personality

If you can look at her
And love her
And impress it into her mind
That this is her life jacket
That you are her port
From the storm in Boston

If you can be better
Than the man she chased to Syracuse
Then she won't need to go to Maine
And fish every day for answers
In a lake of souvenirs

If you can make her love you
If you can do it
Then do it

But you have to do it
On the ride from Syracuse

Because once the car stops
And she's back in front of her house
A mere twenty-four hours
Before she's on the road again
Alone though, without you

Because once the radio's off
And there's still no talking
And you're too scared to say
Stay, just stay

Because once she truly believes
That home has been drained
Of every opportunity at getting past this
This indescribable turn of events

She'll go
And she'll go
And she'll never stop going

So try
Just try

Try to make her talk
Try to make her laugh
Try to make her look up at the road
Going on ahead of you and her
In that tiny car
That keeps going
With lousy parts
And bad brakes

Try to make her see
That life is full of opportunities
To break down
And yet everything's still going
Everyone's still moving

And Syracuse is behind
And Boston is behind
And she's next to you
And you're going

You're going

You're not quite gone