Sleep-Talking

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a bed, two people, one of them awake)
You said something. You said it perfectly clearly.

[Verse 1]
Every other thing on this record happens inside one head.
The lights, the bang, the falling, the face, the weight, the voice —
sealed in, unwitnessed, unprovable, over before it's told.
And then there is this one, which leaves the body and lands in a room.
You spoke. Out loud. At the threshold. About four words.
And somebody heard you, and you will never know what you said.

[Chorus]
Sleep-talking. The one that has a witness.
Somebody lying next to you, awake, in the dark,
hearing you say something in your ordinary voice
about a door, or a name, or a Tuesday, or nothing at all.
Sleep-talking. They'll tell you in the morning.
And you will not remember, and you'll have to take their word.

[Verse 2]
And what people say is almost never interesting. That's the mercy.
It's admin. It's logistics. "The blue one." "Not until six."
Occasionally a name. Very occasionally something tender.
Almost never a secret, whatever the films would like you to think.
The talking part of you goes down last and speaks on the way,
and what it says is the shopping. It's nearly always the shopping.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
But here is the thing I keep coming back to, and then I'll stop:
somebody was awake, and heard you, and did not wake you.
They lay there in the dark and listened to you say your four words
and decided to let you have the sleep, and told you in the morning,
laughing, over the kettle. That's what that is.
That is a person keeping watch. That's all that is.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(quiet, and one person still awake)
What did I say?
You'll never believe what you said.