What Does Your Heart Do?

Up all night
Guess your time is up
Sweet sigh, swallow
Oh, child, you poor child
Is it really so, child?
Oh, in the street where you'd play
There were eyes watching you
Oh, in the bed where you lay, there are eyes watching you

Slick, the skin of our sweaty palms
So slim the lines we slip across
And the sieve will sift our sorrow, swift its loss
This anticipation has you stuttering, I'm struggling only to breathe
Only to keep it high enough to drown these thoughts, these thoughts

Look past it now, have you no faith in me?
Work, work, faster, have you no sense of me?
Of what I can do?
And your shoulder blades
Underneath your dress
Make its shape

Guess your time is up
You poor, poor child

Flickered yellow light, the rain so loud it woke you up
In a half-step from a haze
And lo, the whistling wind, beating tears as they pour out from your eyes

No sense looking back, it's all the same
When we found you, everything would be different
Your mother and I carried you up from nothing
And we knew well then everything we'd be missing
Until we found you, and it was like our prayers were answered
We love you more than we did yesterday
And we will love you more than we did today tomorrow
What once were vacancies in our hearts have been filled every day
And it will never change, no, never

(And it was all that you could do to trust it's right
When you were old enough to see that we can’t keep going on like this
Lest the walls won't hold the heaviest inside
I know, dear, but we have to try to carry on in stride
And keep all your faith in all of the dreams that you love
But you know, you know it's wrong.)

What does your heart do when it fails you?
Does it choke, does it scream from inside you?
Does it press on your ribs like my knees do?
Does it gently defeat what's left of you?

The parasite will find a host in you, my only love

And the worker bees make their sacrifice for the Queen
They keep the hive healthy, keep it calm and pristine
The drones will make children for the love of the Queen
The Queen will not tire of all her royal jelly