Christian is just learning to speak.
He unravels over the phone like a sweater.

He's loyal to the wrong friend
he's in love with the wrong girl
he's destroyed by the rest of the world.

Christian keeps a box under his bed.
He whispers in his sleep.
He always carries his passport with him
in case he has to suddenly disappear.
It's taken him a year to trust me.

Sometimes when he thinks
no one's looking
he touches the scars on his throat
where she nearly clawed him to death.

I parked outside her house today,
he says. I didn't go in. I didn't
want her to see me. I didn't know
what I wanted, but this hurts,
he says. It hurts out loud. I can
hold it in my hands and it's so
heavy, he cries, it's just so heavy.

Christian boils down his days to
coffee, errands, bills, regrets,
daydreams, drinks, crying fits,
phone calls, nightmares.

One night he falls
onto a strange new blanket of skin.
He tells me later that things are better.
Don't worry about me now, he says,
I'm getting it somewhere else now.

In two days he's brittle again,
a china boy who chips away at his skin
just to see how little it takes to leave a mark.

Was it like this before? he asks.
Will it be like this forever?
I can't choke out a yes.
Long distance is too far away
to risk a suicide

On his way to a date with some
interim girl, he gets a message on
his pager. She cancels his chance,
ending his night, before it's begun.
He calls me from a payphone,
halfway across the world, and says
I'm all messed up with no place to
go.

(The lions pick their teeth
clean with your bones.
Christian, your only crime
is that you fell in love with a lion.)

I hear the catch in his voice and
he breaks down, tearing apart like silk.
I just don't want to go home.
I just don't want to go home alone,
he whispers, as if the oxygen
costs too much. If only I
could reach across the country
to the dark parking lot
where he's falling apart a piece
at a time.

(The lions smell your blood
and breathe in your dust.
If they destroy you, Christian,
it's because they must.)

And the little god
with the broken hand
and the broken heart
sighs and beats the time.

I have come to Los Angeles to die,
he moans.
I have come to Los Angeles to die.

See also:
JustSomeLyrics
35
35.40
Simply Red Freedom Lyrics
William Shatner Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds Lyrics