the film unreels before me the celluloid of all these years and I still can’t see you but I hear you telling me we’ll play it by ear but this is so far out of tune and i'm not good enough to fake it so close my eyes and say goodnight to the moon feel sorry for the winter trees, so cold and naked and I crinkled my smile and hid my eyes from the sun and I was impatient when you asked if you were the only one we’re such good actors do we feel or just think we should and I swear that I’d come clean if I thought I could and you gave it all but it all slipped through the cracks and I threw a kiss over my shoulder but I forgot to look back and I want to be witty and clever or at the very least, kind, but I’ve forgotten all the words that used to be so easy to find and I’m aware you’d be good for me if only I would let you be but mutiny comes in every shape and size and by now my jumping ship should come as no great surprise

lights are out all over the country tonight you can’t even turn on a porch light and everything’s a crisis and ice cream’s going for a dollar in the street strangers fall in love with the first face they meet cause there’s something about the dark that’s full of catharsis and there’s a couple on the corner playing a game and every time the outcome’s the same she wonders why he cannot be stopped but it’s as classic as a blackout in the 21st century she always throws scissors but she cannot see he always throws rock so you win again you get to go first you can spin the bottle but don’t kiss the other girls here in the dark what if I see us more clearly we grow up, grow old, grow apart, and what’s the difference really and it’s getting late now but no one can tell with no streetlights on and no ringing church bells cause even those run on electricity these days and she says I didn’t want you to love me, I only wanted you to pretend I didn’t want to get caught up again in the madness, the sadness, the long lonely Sundays but he reaches for her hand, the street lights flicker she feels her heartbeat get a little bit quicker and she thinks maybe, just maybe this love won’t break her and he says let’s change a few things around stop trying to cut us up and I won’t weigh us down and baby, we’ll both be paper we’ll both be paper, translucent as sky and you’ll finally see my love will never die it’s plain as day if you look in my eyes it’s written right there on this dark black night and we’ll both be paper.

cameras and guidebooks no ice cream on Mondays sticking to their schedules the actors find their way they've got shutterbug impulses and voices that linger scripts always in hand following their lines with an index finger and we giggle cause we can cause we are the hero and the heroine and this is just a giant movie set and the faces just keep changing and we are the backdrop we are the stuffing of this plot we are the stuff that dreams are made of and all the would-be juliets and romeos fall over themselves to make the cut to be the star of this show and we giggle cause we can cause we are the hero and the heroine and the wind is cold when it hits your face it gets dark here by 4 o'clock and they have to keep all the lighting in place otherwise the extras get lost and they stumble around their maps turned upside down but we know our way through this sleepy little hillside town and you take me through the alleys and you take me by the hand and we dart down a back street as the camera starts to pan and we're laughing cause we can cause we are the hero and the heroine yeah we're laughing cause we can cause we are the hero and the heroine.