To Set You Free

“To Set You Free”

Take me home to another starving love.
Lay some roses on the grasses above
My grave…I don’t know who I’m facing,
Which side of you my heart is chasing,
I’m just trying to make sense of your intention,
And why you’re giving me your attention
From such a distance—holding me at arm’s length
As if I ever had the strength
To deny you—my heart is starving
And I long for your cruelty, darling.

So…why so friendly now that time has past?
What is the story behind the great contrast
Between winter snows and the springtide rose?

Tell me what part of me you can’t betray
With the things you do and the words you say
Tell me if your love is that of a real embrace,
Or if you have come home in disgrace
From the wars of who you have been kissing.
Is it my love you have been missing,
Or is it my tears you hunger for?
They fell then, and they fall once more
To see you go from fire to ice.
I see through your disguise:
I know that you are playing your own part,
In this tragedy tattooed upon my heart—
But, I loved you, and in loving, set you free,
And now you have come back to me.

Dare I set you free again?
Nothing is as it has been
Nothing is as it appeared before,
And you are not yourself anymore.
I want to know this new soul
That I find so beautiful
But the shadow it will cast
Is the same eclipse of the past.

You will find me weeping anew
And know it’s all for you.
You are gone, yet you are here now
I do not know how—
You live, but you are ghost who haunts
And each chamber of my heart wants
This undead figure to intrude
Upon the sorrow of their solitude.
There is nobody else, there is nobody else
Other than the souls within ourselves.
Somebody is drowning, and I fear it is I
In your river, where it is good to die.

So, if you need me—I cannot stop you
You don’t deserve it, but I cannot stop you
Because I do not deserve it. You see me crying
But you do not feel my spirit dying,
Dying to be within your cruelty,
Dying to have you come back to me
Now that I have set you free.

© 2022 Marten Hoyle