Song 5 of 20
Song 5 of 20
Embedded Files
Living together has exposed differences that were easier to avoid when they had separate homes. Their first serious arguments become heated enough to make both of them question how conflict will be handled in the future. Walking away is still possible, but neither truly wants that. They reach the point where the relationship must either remain provisional or become something they are prepared to defend even when being together is difficult.
There’s safety in a half-packed caseA spare key and an unnamed placeA door that never quite clicks shutA promise always paired with “but”There’s safety in a measured yesAnd less to lose by loving lessOne foot outside, one hand held freeSo nothing takes too much of me
But every exit has a costA life half-held is wholly lostI could come through untouched, aloneAnd never know I’d found a home
I’m taking this whole life with both hands nowI know the risk, and still I make this vowI know these hands can’t hold the years in placeBut I can meet them with you, face to faceI won’t keep half my heart outside the doorI’m not rehearsing exits anymore
Your jacket hangs beside my coatThree birthdays fill the note you wroteThe porch needs paint, the sink still dripsA friend calls; half the evening slipsMy work boots dry beside the stairsYour book lies open by our chairsWe make next summer’s plans in inkThen laugh and change them by the sink
To keep what time may take awayI’d never dare to choose to stayA guarded heart may never breakBut never has a life at stake
I’m taking this whole life with both hands nowI know the risk, and still I make this vowI know these hands can’t hold the years in placeBut I can meet them with you, face to faceI won’t keep half my heart outside the doorI’m not rehearsing exits anymore
Love gives loss my own home addressA name, a key, a place to restNo ring commands the turning yearsNo promise bars the door to tearsI know the bargain, line by lineNo hidden clause before I signI read it through; I understandThen turn to where I know you stand
I’m taking this whole life with both hands nowI know the risk, and still I make this vowI know these hands can’t hold the years in placeBut I can meet them with you, face to faceI won’t keep half my heart outside the doorI’m not rehearsing exits anymore
Then leave the suitcase where it stands.I set it down and take your hands.
But every exit has a costA life half-held is wholly lostI could come through untouched, aloneAnd never know I’d found a home
I’m taking this whole life with both hands nowI know the risk, and still I make this vowI know these hands can’t hold the years in placeBut I can meet them with you, face to faceI won’t keep half my heart outside the doorI’m not rehearsing exits anymore
Your jacket hangs beside my coatThree birthdays fill the note you wroteThe porch needs paint, the sink still dripsA friend calls; half the evening slipsMy work boots dry beside the stairsYour book lies open by our chairsWe make next summer’s plans in inkThen laugh and change them by the sink
To keep what time may take awayI’d never dare to choose to stayA guarded heart may never breakBut never has a life at stake
I’m taking this whole life with both hands nowI know the risk, and still I make this vowI know these hands can’t hold the years in placeBut I can meet them with you, face to faceI won’t keep half my heart outside the doorI’m not rehearsing exits anymore
Love gives loss my own home addressA name, a key, a place to restNo ring commands the turning yearsNo promise bars the door to tearsI know the bargain, line by lineNo hidden clause before I signI read it through; I understandThen turn to where I know you stand
I’m taking this whole life with both hands nowI know the risk, and still I make this vowI know these hands can’t hold the years in placeBut I can meet them with you, face to faceI won’t keep half my heart outside the doorI’m not rehearsing exits anymore
Then leave the suitcase where it stands.I set it down and take your hands.
Behind The Song
Behind The Song
No Safe Distance contains one of the central propositions of the entire album:
To value something deeply is to become vulnerable to losing it.
There is no way around that fact.
You can reduce the possibility of heartbreak by refusing to love deeply. You can avoid losing a home by never allowing a place to become home. You can avoid depending upon friendship by staying emotionally distant. You can keep an escape route open in every relationship so that nothing ever acquires enough importance to devastate you.
It may work.
But look carefully at what has been protected.
A person can reduce the eventual pain by reducing the preceding value. The album regards that not as wisdom, but as pre-emptive impoverishment.
A guarded heart may indeed break less often. It may also experience less worth breaking over.
The protagonist now understands something the younger version of himself did not. People change. Bodies age. Relationships can end. Even a successful marriage contains no contract with reality guaranteeing that both people will reach old age together.
He understands the proposition.
He has not yet experienced the great loss.
That difference matters. His philosophy does not make him grief-proof.
Instead, it allows him to make a conscious judgment before the test arrives:
The possibility that loving you may someday hurt does not make loving you a mistake.
That is attachment with its eyes open.
He does not surrender his identity. She does not become his entire reason for existence. But he refuses to remain halfway outside the life they are constructing merely because permanence is unavailable.
He puts down the suitcase.
Not because nothing can happen.
Because something already has.
He has found a life worth staying for.
The Takeaway
The Takeaway
The price of a rich life is that reality can take from us things we genuinely value. We can lower that risk only by loving less, building less, needing less and standing farther from life, and that is not wisdom, but impoverishment. Mortality is not a reason to withhold ourselves from worthy values; it is a reason to choose them carefully and enter them fully.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse