The End

She draws the pearls up to her lips
 Like so many stars, so many ships
 Shooting and sinking under her coat
 It's too much to say and it's too much to hope
 She feels the flower filling her throat
 She feels the watcher beginning to gloat
 Dangerous thoughts for a young little girl
 Wrapped up in bed, safe from the world
 Slipping as silent as snow on her bed
 A beautiful murder unravels itself in her head
 She feels every nail every stake he drove in
 The arc of the eyebrows he etched into her skin
 And now all the birds are flying away
 I wish you would too but you only stay
 To ask me and ask me and ask me again
 Ask me and ask me and ask me again
 But you know what you know and you know I'll give in
 You want to go where nobody's been
 You want to know what's at the end
 Just as the tiger enters her slip
 To give her the gift of the river caught in her teeth
 To twist and to turn a long silent thread
 All silver and knotted and begging itself to be said
 Just like the violets filling her room
 She feels empty space beginning to bloom
 A terrible price to exact for that
 Once you go there you can never get back
 I never wanted to be tough as that
 Oh, from the end
 Oh, at the end
 Oh, it's the end
 Of me