אמת from About Faces by Walrus Promenade

Well, it’s not your job to teach me to acknowledge what I’m feeling.
And it’s not your job to teach me how to be a human being.
But ooh, in thirty years I never learned it on my own.
Well, I just kept pretending I was made all out of stone, not flesh and bone
and a brain that’s too electric to be swayed by math alone.

Well it’s not your job to soothe my jealousy.
And it’s not your job to convince me you won’t leave me.
You don’t have to keep me happy all the time.
And if it’s anybody’s job to make sure I’m good enough, it’s mine;
at least it ought to be.

So I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this one thing about you—
and I’ll reciprocate just as much as I still know how to—
you just don’t tolerate anything less than finding out what’s really true.

But it’s not your job to talk me down
when I can’t handle the truth.
And it’s not your job to do the work that I can do here in the booth.
Yeah, sometimes I feel so clueless, but I’m not.
And it’s not your job to be my cue list when I lose the plot.

No, you don’t need to light my stage or free me when I lock myself away.
Being flesh instead of clay is a decision I can make.
So if I tend to self-delude and need a shot of something true, it’s not on you.

Yeah, I can write that word on my own forehead.
I’m not bound by what my hapless father would or wouldn’t have said.
He erased that first letter of his label himself,
but I’m gonna keep mine as long as I’m able.

So you don’t have to love a stone just cause it’s cold, or warm it up.
And it’s obviously not your job to fill my cup.
But it runneth over with a grace I sometimes feel I don’t deserve.
But that’s not how grace works.

• Alternative
• indie rock
• miscellanous
• singer-songwriter
• Seattle