Carrie Link

AFTER ALL

Dar Williams says what I'm feeling better than I can...


"Go ahead, push you luck, find out how much love the world can hold,
Once upon a time I had control, and reigned my soul in tight.
Well the whole truth, it's like the story of a wave unfurled,
But I held the evil of the world, so I stopped the tide, froze it up from inside,
And it felt like a winter machine, that you go through and then,
You catch your breath and winter starts again, and everyone else is spring bound.


And when I chose to live, there was no joy, it's just a line I crossed,
It wasn't worth the pain my death would cost, so I was not lost or found.
And if I was to sleep, I knew my family had more truth to tell.
And so I traveled down a whispering well, to know myself through them.
Growing up, my mom had a room full of books, and hid away in there,
Her father raging down a spiral stair, till he found someone, most days his son,
And sometimes I think my father, too, was a refugee,
I know they tried to keep their pain from me, they could not see what it was for.
But now Im sleeping fine, sometimes the truth is like a second chance.
I am the daughter of a great romance, and they are the children of the war.

Well the sun rose with so many colors, it nearly broke my heart,
It worked me over like a work of art, and I was a part of all that.
So go ahead, push your luck, say what it is you gotta say to me,
We will push on into that mystery, and it'll push right back, and there are worse things than that,
Cause for every price, and every penance that I could think of,
It's better to have fallen in love, than never to have fallen at all,
Cause when you live in a world, well it gets into who you thought you'd be,
And now I laugh at how the world changed me, I think life chose me after all."