Love with a Limp (Second Chance)

Lyrics

October tenth, nineteen seventy-five.
The air in Botswana is warm and dry.
No flashbulbs here by the Chobe River.
Just two people, making a choice.
She wore a striped skirt, simple green and white.
Not the Valentino this time.
A guinea fowl feather in her hair.
He stood beside her, the same Welsh lines etched around his eyes.
Trying to build a house on ground that had already shifted once.
Trying to say the old words and make them new.
This is love with a limp.
It doesn't run, it doesn't leap.
It knows the exact location of the break.
It remembers the fall.
It's a second chance, not a new one.
And it walks carefully, so carefully, across the room.
They left the Kalizma yacht in some distant harbor.
Left the blinding glare of Montreal.
The Krupp diamond wasn't on her finger today.
Just a simple band.
He once said his heart was bleeding, that he couldn't live without her.
Turns out he could. For a little while.
But the wound never really closed.
This is love with a limp.
It doesn't run, it doesn't leap.
It knows the exact location of the break.
It remembers the fall.
It's a second chance, not a new one.
And it walks carefully, so carefully, across the room.
"We had a hiatus," she told the papers.
"Now we're back."
As if it were a television show, returning after summer.
As if the wreckage in Switzerland could be swept away
by the African sun.
They knew better.
And they did it anyway.
Ten months.
The limp was too pronounced. The old break too severe.
The river keeps flowing.
The guinea fowl feather, a small, forgotten thing,
catches the wind.
Just for a moment.
Then it's gone.