Half-Life

(half a life, half a life) Five months, and the walls stay white. You never hang the pictures up. You learn the curve before you learn the name, how a person fades, the half of them gone, then the half of that again. Cities from the coast to the plains, a new key, then a suitcase by the night, a route drawn through you, never a room you keep the light on in. And you meet someone good on a Tuesday, you can already do the maths, how long until the call goes weekly, monthly, then how are you, mate, twice a year. So you hold a little back, you keep the boxes by the door, you leave before you ever feel here. A friend in Vancouver you will never live near. A pulse comes up under the quiet like a tide you didn't ask for. You can feel the room about to start, and you are already counting it down. Everything here has a half-life, half a life, half a life. You let them become ghosts before they arrive, arrive, arrive. And some nights you cannot tell, you cannot tell, where is the place you stay, or the door you keep choosing to close. (half a life, half a life) Passport thick as a paperback, another year of crossing maps, and a phone full of people you used to be able to reach. It degrades the way they all do now, the long reels to the shorter text, to the nothing, to the photo of a night you weren't at. You stopped investing somewhere back there, quietly, without a vote, because it ends, it always ends, so why begin. You can build a whole self in a city in a week, and call it home, walk out clean, never once let anyone in. This is the part you circle round. Is it the road that pulls you, the work, the leaving, the airport dawn, or is it home that keeps shifting, another address, another key on a ring. You stand in a room with your name on the bell and you still feel in transit, you watch all your homes in the mix like a sound that keeps phasing through, and you stay out in between, half-leaving, half-choosing. You can't tell, you can't tell. Everything here has a half-life, half a life, half a life. You let them become ghosts before they arrive, arrive, arrive. And some nights you cannot tell, you cannot tell, where is the place you stay, or a door you keep choosing as home. (half a life, half a life) The boxes by the door. The walls still white. Is this the place you stay, or a door, or a door. (half a life) You never did find home.