Leaving Rhode Island: Jazz

I used to take her out for jazz

Seemed like the smart thing to do

I don’t know much about jazz

Never did

Not sure how I ended up

In New Orleans

But here I am

The letter I got says I can go back to Rhode Island

But I got another letter from her

Saying ‘Don’t come back’

I had a dad who was good at playing things

Trumpets and people

I can’t play a damn thing

I sit on couches and fall asleep

I leave the tv on

To echo through my apartment

Making me feel like there’s somebody in the house

But me

The house I’m in was here before Katrina

And there are marks on the walls

Where the water came up

Sometimes I have dreams

About the ghost of the water

I wake up and I’m drenched

But the house is dry

Can you explain that?

A person’s not the only thing

That knows how to haunt

Sometimes a notion sticks around

Long after it’s supposed to have died

She stands out in the hallway

As a notion, not a lady

As a silhouette of remembrance

As a trick of the eye, trick of the mind

As a lost memory

She wants me to go to bed

She says she’ll meet me there

But a letter written by someone a lot more solid than her

Says ‘Don’t come back’

So I don’t

And I don’t ask why

Why ask, right?

Whatever she thinks you did

You did

Whatever notion she’s got in her head

Ain’t goin’ away

You can drown in all the water

That isn’t really there

So you leave the tv on

And the lights on

And doors open

And the windows closed

But the jazz music sneaks in through the cracks

The music you don’t live anywhere near

The kind that lives in your past

It plays for you

It plays, and plays, and plays…