I let the car drift some Eye your uncomfortable pose in profile The postures of long drives That endless cycling of your numb and near sleeping parts
And you lean much harder than you need when the road curves Swerve through traffic and the cracks in the ground Every gesture you require of a drive like this night When you fight now you just head out of town
I let the wheel go over center lines Inside a place without time, a loop through history Eye you in periphery now prone in the passenger seat It’s a mystery the ways you can sleep
I want to leave here for where nobody goes I want to breathe in the air of all those sprawling ancient spaces on earth You said we’re so scared of alone and I knew what you meant You want to go where it glows all those places where your watch doesn’t work
You were riding those nights on the highway always hiding out inside a songwriter’s dream there Like a scene from a song, “Born to Run,” or maybe “Running on Empty” Ones where they would leave
Certain nights when you’d fight you couldn’t stick around So you’d head out of town Just hit the highway and drive Certain nights when you’d fight it was fine But it shook you when the baby would cry
Why did you always turn around in the end? To hear the shattering of glass on the door again? So loud the baby couldn’t sleep anymore? What didn’t you find that you were looking for?
Your mother called a hardware Set you up an interview An answer to an ad The bosses’ daughter still remembers dinner where her father said He wouldn’t stick his neck out for trouble again But they did then And those days you’d wake up and just decide you wouldn’t show He’d show up at your door Nights you’d skip town He’d follow you out Pretty soon you started falling for their daughter And she fell for you
Drive roll every window down Let the desert enter heavy and primitive in Drift till rumble strips sound Time moves so slow but I know that you meant what you said You want to go where it’s frozen All those places where the highways don’t reach
You want to go where it glows Somewhere that time is irrelevant You want to go where it glows Somewhere the spaces are infinite
You want to go where it glows Somewhere you don’t feel the hours pass by You identified the flowers on the road I rolled the windows down and shut off the radio
Did you ever think you’d end up here All those late nights you spent driving alone? You were riding to hide or you were looking for a brand new life Did you ever think you’d find one back home?
Did you even think you’d get out alive? Could you imagine then the love you now know?
I think history’s a system of roads and there’s nowhere it doesn’t go
I pulled over to the side and felt no time Off the highway with the landscape aglow Still not sure what we were trying to find I only know we went home