18

what happens at the end of the night?

What happens at the end of the night? 
What happens at the end of a life?
When it all makes sense, finally
and the fantasies come crashing down.

It's not your fault you make me want to leave my old life behind.
It's too strange, being not eighteen but twenty-eight
I want to and I don't want to go back in time.
I remember too much of what it was like.

Babysitting on the weekends
my cheeks hurt from faking a smile
essentially treated as the help, God knows I wouldn't go back.
I live with you in another world
and it's a very good world, I don't want to leave
I'll do whatever you want.

I remember being stupid and too young to drink
only lemonade and iced tea for me
and I wasn't alright.
I know you would have left me alone
had you met me back then, I know it's true
but also I'm sure I wouldn't have wanted you to.
Legal or not
I guess I thought highly of myself
at the edge of seventeen.
I think of all of these things now, it's true
I do, and I can't help it.
And now that I'm older, I wish that I'd outgrown it
those heart-shaped sunglasses
we live in a perverse world, we really do.

It's all wrong, but in the end it has to be alright.
Better that than having to rewire my brain through years of therapy
and won't it all be fine in the end 
if I can just be yours?
And I'd say I don't care if you're mine
but you know that's obviously a lie.
I wish I didn't, but I do care about money
the undeniable ways in which it shapes my life
and what's this strange power you've got over me?
Another thing I might like to, but I can't, deny.

I could be sweet, I could recite something that sounds like bullshit
but maybe it's not, maybe that's what's frightening.
I could say:
it would be the greatest honour of my life to belong to you.
So there you go
is it enough, is it alright?
The love, the need, the drug
it all rushes back to my head again.

But what happens at the end of the night?
What happens at the end of a life?
When it all comes crashing down
and it's easy to see, easy to say 
that you're all alone again
and easy to wonder
if you always have been.