Jenn Setts - Prolific

Jenn Setts was the new kid in school when I was seventeen

She walked the halls alone stoned as an empty queen

Seldom seen, bare-boned but graceful all the same

She’d sit at the picnic tables even when it rained

Content, carving spiders in the wood

She’d wear a long jacket second-hand hiding in the hood

Sometimes you could find her alone hiding in a nook

Curled up in a corner or even crying in a book

I always wanted to talk but never knew what to say

She moved in this way, quiet, removed and estranged

A tattoo of a moon on her waist, a bruise on her face

With white powder to smooth away the blues and the greys

Her beauty was strange, scars on her wrists were left

In a place where a knife had at one point split the flesh

Fingertips stained with cigarettes you could sense her sweet decay

Yet she was calm and never seemed afraid

We made my love and I, beneath the weeping willow

Nowhere to go at least we can dream a little

Keep it simple as the days go by

Stare at each other’s minds and watch angels die

One day walking down the street I saw her sitting on the curb

Throwing crumbs of bread down to a little ring of birds

The pigeons didn’t stir they gravitated to her silence

Dressed in black, with a little tinge of violet

I approached the pale face not sure what to say

Broke the silence with my step and watched the birds fly away

Reached for words but was left gazing at her black hair

Smiled but nothing came back but a blank stare

Thinking to myself, I should have left her there in peace

Cuz come to think, of it I’d never heard her speak

But took a seat beside her and said «Hi, I’ve seen you around…»

And she responded but she was speaking to the ground

She told me she lived with her dad that her mom was back at home

That she hated this town so she spent most her time alone

But she liked it that way, at least that’s what she said

And then she turned and walked away, and that’s how we met

On the ride home Jenn and I we took the same bus

So we’d sit together but neither of us would say much

I’d get off in my small town she’d get off in the country side

As I moved past from the inner seat my hands would brush her thighs

Sometimes our eyes’d connect, alive in the flesh

There was something between us but it seemed that silence was best

Yet one night I stayed with her until the last stop

An open field small house red sky as a back-drop

We stepped from the bus hands locked and walked inside the house

Into the gloomy dark where all the lights were out

Expect for the flicker of the tv and the red sky in the clouds

To see her father passed out, lying on the couch

She said «He's always like that, no one understands

I don’t see why I have to live with him when my mother can’t,»

He was an ugly man, face stained a rusted tan

The lonely owner of this open country land

I saw her run her hands along his side, in a mournful silence…

Silence.

are you alright???

And she said come, I have, something to show you

A place that I love that I want you to go to

I followed as she ran off deep into the field

To the weeping willow where she stopped and said here

Father said it’s been growing more than a hundred years

It’s where I lie and let the wind whisper sweet nothings in my ear

So we sat under the tree and I could feel her holding on

Her skin was cold and soft but below her soul was calm

Lying on stones and moss until the sun rose at dawn

Watching the smoke and smog roll across the open pond

…Watching the smoke and smog roll across the open pond…