When We Could No Longer Fill the Silence

When we could no longer fill the silence
We talked about it

We talked around it
We talked over it
We talked into it

We played a card game
To see who would win
The unwinnable argument

We sat around the theater
And pretended things were fine

We dressed up in costumes
And hung out on fake chairs
Fake because they're made
Specifically to fool people
Into thinking they're chairs

That they're chairs from the sixties
Or the forties or the twenties

The serving trays have to be from World War II
The picnic basket looks too Ohio and not enough North Dakota
The meetings we have become sub-meetings become tangent meetings
Become meetings about the meetings
And how nothing's happening at the meetings

Then we go to our laptops
And bitch about people
In private messages
While sitting next to them

And the whole while we talk
And we express
And we communicate
And we play card games
And we bluff
And we stuff our faces
With junk food and wet kisses

And we're lying by trying not to say
That we're worried about the day when the set has to be struck
Because we'll still be stuck in a July environment
When the guy we like is back in Cali
Tallying tips from a Friday night waiting at Friday's

And we wonder what we can fill the silence with--

Because memories make tiny noises
When they hit the bottom
Of the silence

Because addictions to tv shows and inside jokes
Don't seem to take up enough of our attention
To merit a mention in our phone calls to friends

And when the summer ends
The silence ends
And we can return to the noise
Of the Fall falling into place

But the grace we felt staring at a tide
Turning in, turning out

Walking back up to us
Then swimming out again

The sunlight cresting on the back of a guy
We wish we could ask to stay
Seems like more than you could pray for
Even if you prayed

And right before he played his last show
You talked about it, didn't you?

You talked
You asked
You learned to pray

You asked him to stay

That was it, wasn't it?

Was that it?