Help Me Breathe

Sophie B. Hawkins

A silent woman parts her lips

To speak before she ought

She makes a cross of her emotions

And a panic of her thoughts

Out of her mouth she comes in rages

Like Vesuvius in heat

She runs ahead of her intentions

Though she's programmed for defeat



By the hunger and the hatred

The prostitution of her nature

She has given and forgiven for to give her

Kunt forgave her

To the longing for a loving hand

Or fist or cock or spike

But you know you cannot reach her

'Til she's taken back her life



A lonely child of fourteen

Finds her future in a drum

She plays for present day omissions

And for whom she must become

Out of her passion breaks the stillness

Of a solitary mind

A strict devotion to the rhythm

With a substitute for time



She looks out of her window

At the changes in the sky

She never wants to leave her sanctuary

Bedroom, books and lies

But she's grown up on the outside

With an instinct for the pain

That drives the men inside her wild

And women wanting her insane



Both lovers bring their cameras

To the beach on New Year's eve

They are expecting nothing other

Than to see what they believe

Four feet walking toward the lighthouse

In the freezing winter rain

She flashes stately in the distance

Humming her somnolent refrain



"You are here now, you are here now

There is nothing left to fear now

" With each step the sunk is sinking

Though the truth is less unclear now

They have won a thousand battles

They have wrung their own demise

Now they are standing still and weeping

For a love they can't despise



A silent woman and a lonely child

Have nowhere else to go

But to the lighthouse in December

Before the New Year takes its toll

They have found inside each other

What they had lost within themselves

Now they are bonded to forever

In their search for something else



Generations like the water