The Wanting of You - Georgia Stitt, Susan Egan

I’m walking in my head down Avenue B

As the echo of a guitar strums

Tightening my overcoat

And waiting for contentment

Like a bus that never comes

Crushing my hat over angry hair

I beg my pocket for a cigarette

And instead I find a nickel

And a crumpled little napkin

With a poem for a lover I need to forget…

The wanting of you

It colors everything I do

It’s in my house and in my bed

It’s there in every tear I shed

When I don’t think I’ll make it through

The wanting of you

It is my unsurrendered prayer

I trace your hands upon my skin

How did I dare to let you in

It’s almost more than I can bear

The wanting of you

I patronize myself as I take my chair

In the couldn’t care less café

Accept the silent greeting of the mother with the baby

And the model with the black shar pei

There’s a NYU kid who raises one lid

Then goes back to his thousand page book…

And I spend another morning tracing stories in the oatmeal

That some Spanish guy did not remember to cook…

The wanting of you

It wakes me up at half past two

With long gone shadows I converse

I think it can’t get any worse

But how I know that isn’t true

The wanting of you

It is a never ending storm

I wear it everywhere I go

Just like a coat that doesn’t know

That it’s supposed to keep me warm.

You…

Knocking on my door, stumbling over words

Laughing at my jokes, losing wallets

You,

Never getting mad, sort of getting mad, never understanding

Understanding everything

You

Absolutely right

Absolutely wrong

Everything that matters…

Nothing but a song

Nothing but a song

I step into the bath round a quarter past three

Let the water ease my wounded pride

I wash away my sorrow with a promise of tomorrow

But the water doesn’t let me hide…

The clock on the wall says go ahead stall

You’re entitled to a way to cope…

And I wonder if it isn’t really lonliness that kills you

I think people really die of hope

of hope

The wanting of you

It colors everything I do

It’s in my house and in my bed

It’s there in every tear I shed

When I don’t think I’ll make it through

The wanting of you

It is my unsurrendered prayer

I trace your hands upon my skin

How did I dare to let you in

It’s almost more than I can bear

The wanting of you.