Baltimore Sun

Did the Baltimore sun [1] shine on you so hard
That it made you forget all the times that we'd shared
And the grass in Galena [2], did it tickle your feet
so softly that it made you laugh the way that I once did

Did the words of my song strike a core deep inside
The castle you're building around that fragile heart
Did the spy that I sent behind your central defenses
bring back secrets that only the love of your life should have seen

And I remember you saying,
"I'm so happy I could die,"[3] and what a shame that I am finally so happy I could live
"I'm so light that I could fly," and what a shame that I am finally so grounded after all these years

Did I tell you the light in my fingers has dimmed
And the jets in my toes won't burn as brightly again
Did I tell you the runways at Midway[4]
don't bring me the joy that they used to when they flew you to me

And I played my guitar the day that you left my orbit
Until I broke all the strings that you may have heard me playing
Then I hummed all the songs I had written for you
but never played because I feared you would figure them out

And I called up the Westerville[5] weekly gazette
And I spoke to a girl who had your middle initial
And I placed an obituary for that little morsel of my heart
that you buried the night that you fled


  1. Sadly, I was, quite literally, referring to the summer sun in Baltimore, which was delivering epic heat when I visited for my then-girlfriend's friend's wedding in July. We caught an Orioles game and I felt sad for the mascot, dealing with the heat in his 100% polyester full-body suit. It was only months (years?) later that I paid attention to the coincidental reference to the local paper. ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. Galena, IL, bed-and-breakfast capital of Jo Daviess county. ↩︎

  3. The girlfriend and I were both under the spell of Ralph Covert's deep repertoire that summer, Last Two Days of My Life in particular. ↩︎

  4. KMDW ↩︎

  5. Westerville, as in Ohio, the return address on all my Chase credit card bills, home of Heathers, and also the aforementioned[1:1] ex-girlfriend. ↩︎

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