The Sea Is a Good Place to Think of the Future

I grabbed hold of her wrist and my hand closed from tip to tip
I said, you've taken the diet too far, you've got to let it slip
But she's not eating again, she's not eating again
She's not eating again, she's not eating again

I ask her to speak French and then I need her to translate
I get the feeling she makes the meaning more significant
She was always far too pretty for me
To believe in a single word she said, believe a word she said

At fourteen her mother died in a routine operation
From allergic reaction to a general anesthetic
Spent the rest of her teens experimenting with prescriptions
In a futile attempt to know more than the doctors

She said, one day to leave her
Sand up to her shoulders waiting for the tide
To drag her to the ocean, to another sea's shore
This thing hurts like hell but what did you expect

And all you can hear is the sound of your own heart
And all you can feel is your lungs flood and the blood course
But oh I can see five hundred years dead set ahead of me
Five hundred behind, a thousand years in perfect symmetry

Best known left wrist right finger through all the southern states
On every video games machine they call her triple A
There were racists on the radio trying to give up smoking
The chat show host, he joked
You have to wait for the government program

You talk about your politics
And I wonder if you could be one of them
But you could never kiss a Tory boy
Without wanting to cut off your tongue again

A good place to look to the future is
When you are sat at the sea
With the salt up to your ankles
And a view of the end of the pier

You may look down at your model's feet
And wish that you'd just float away
And the weather here is overcast
And the sea is the same shade of gray

So the landscape before you looks just like the edge of the world
But to the left side and the right side
Either way is a crazy golf course
The sea is a good place to think of the future

And all you can hear is the sound of your own heart
And all you can feel is your lungs flood and the blood course
But oh I can see five hundred years dead set ahead of me
Five hundred behind, a thousand years in perfect symmetry
A thousand years no getting rid of me
A thousand years in perfect symmetry