Help Me Breathe by Sophie B. Hawkins

A silent woman parts her lips
To speak before she ought
She makes a cross of her emotions
And a panic of her thoughts
Out of her mouth she comes in rages
Like vesuvius in heat
She runs ahead of her intentions
Though she’s programmed for defeat

By the hunger and the hatred
The prostitution of her nature
She has given and forgiven for to give her
Kunt forgave her
To the longing for a loving hand
Or fist or cock or spike
But you know you cannot reach her
’til she’s taken back her life

A lonely child of fourteen
Finds her future in a drum
She plays for present day omissions
And for whom she must become
Out of her passion breaks the stillness
Of a solitary mind
A strict devotion to the rhythm
With a substitute for time

She looks out of her window
At the changes in the sky
She never wants to leave her sanctuary
Bedroom, books and lies
But she’s grown up on the outside
With an instinct for the pain
That drives the men inside her wild
And women wanting her insane

Both lovers bring their cameras
To the beach on new year’s eve
They are expecting nothing other
Than to see what they believe
Four feet walking toward the lighthouse
In the freezing winter rain
She flashes stately in the distance
Humming her somnolent refrain

"you are here now, you are here now
There is nothing left to fear now
" with each step the sunk is sinking
Though the truth is less unclear now
They have won a thousand battles
They have wrung their own demise
Now they are standing still and weeping
For a love they can’t despise

A silent woman and a lonely child
Have nowhere else to go
But to the lighthouse in december
Before the new year takes its toll
They have found inside each other
What they had lost within themselves
Now they are bonded to forever
In their search for something else

Generations like the water
Shape the face of every stone
A pedigree’s an invitation
To discover you’re alone
Out in the kitchen or the courtyard
Or the bedroom or the bank
It only takes a fateful moment
To become the one you thank

And light shall lift them
Higher and higher
And dreams shall carry them on
And loss shall lead them
To life’s final hour
Where death shall overcome