Once a Year
Izadora Hoffmann
The curtains draw the light from a day that didn't see you
And the silence of the house is an ocean that swallowed me too
Your side of the bed is cold, yet it still holds your trace
I keep your pillow like a captain guarding the last safe place
I walk through the rooms, a phantom with nowhere left to roam
Searching for your voice in an echo that insists on not coming home
But when the Moon erases the Sun and the city finally sleeps
I close my eyes and feel your warmth that my memory keeps
It is the only moment when this yearning calms my soul
And I find you again, making me briefly whole
But the rest of the year is just dust, just sand slipping through
Until the day the calendar makes the time return to you
Folded umbrellas, an old note, your favorite worn-out tee
They are small daggers that cut short this incomplete life of me
I remember the sound of the rain and the melodies you would invent
Of the imperfect chords that only to my heart were sent
I wish I could erase October from all my diaries' space
But it's the month where the memory challenges time's final embrace
But when the Moon erases the Sun and the city finally sleeps
I close my eyes and feel your warmth that my memory keeps
It is the only moment when this yearning calms my soul
And I find you again, making me briefly whole
But the rest of the year is just dust, just sand slipping through
Until the day the calendar makes the time return to you
And then, on that night, the very date of your goodbye
Your old guitar case shifts, without the help of my eye
It's a single, sharp note that tears the air, deep and off-key
It's not my hand, not my guitar, it is yours, returning to me
Once a year, the string vibrates in the utter dark
And I know that life exists beyond this lonely mark
It's the promise that the music that bound us will never die
And when the Moon erases the Sun and the city finally sleeps
I close my eyes and feel your warmth that my memory keeps
It is the only moment when this yearning calms my soul
And I find you again, making me briefly whole
Once a year, your guitar plays, and I finally can see
That a part of your love still lives in me, for all eternity