Horrible Qualities - Stuck To You Lyrics

Josh Ritter Horrible Qualities - Stuck To You

Tarnished mirror in the hall
Reflects the ghosts that come to call
Dressed in dusty silken gowns
Dancing in the shadowed sounds

Eyes like echoes not quite there
Should be dead but instead stare
Behind me up stairs they bound
They're gone when I have turned around

On the walls that seem to cry
Are the monsters finally free?
Oh, what secrets do they hide
Behind the family tapestry?

A handless maiden leads a mare
Through half-deserted bedrooms bare
To her the sunlight filters in
From out behind the red curtains

A little girl in framed attire
Hangs her locks above the fire
She takes your hand, writes her lines
Drench the page with children's rhymes

In the walls that seem to cry
Are the monsters finally free?
Oh, what secrets do they hide
These bright-lit whispered histories?

Smoking jackets play around
What house of theirs once fallen down
Is crept in ruins behind closed doors
In hallways not gone down before

A lonely reader in the gloom
Hears footsteps in the other room
It's only children playing ball
In the tarnished mirror in the hall

In the rooms that seem to cry
Are the monsters finally free?
Oh, what secrets do they hide?
Is the only monster me?

Well there's one thing Mama, I think you should know
It is not love that makes the flowers grow
But a complex electron transfer process known as
photosynthesis when chlorophyll reacts with the light
of day
Since you're gone, the light has gone away

Oh there's one more thing Mama, I think that you'll
find
It is not love that makes the stars shine
But the spontaneous combustion of super-heated and
super-condensed gasses in the process known as fusion
that creates new elements when the time is right
Since you're gone, stars don't shine so bright

Oh there's another thing Mama, I think I should confide
It is not love that'll turn the tide
But the net difference in the gravitational pull
between the Earth and the Moon as it is acted out upon
the waves
But since you're gone, I feel washed away

I could have been a mathematician
Studied rockets for a livin'
Would've worked out better in the end
But to get more specific I'd break every law of physics
To bring you back to me again

Well there's one more thing, I'll tell you if I can
It is not love, that makes a non-stick frying pan
But a top-secret, trademarked, conglomerated, most
likely carcinogenic, polyurethane compound spread in a
micro-thin substance, over a negatively charged layer
of aluminum, copper, iron, lead, VHS, FYI, apple pie,
FBI, and some other elements too
Since you're gone, I wish I'd stuck to you