I never said I was leaving, but I was, I was leaving Plans already set in motion, thought I understood the meaning There was nothing there to stop me, not a reason intervening Until something made me stop, forced to see what I wasn’t seeing I packed a little, I packed some more, kept everything contained Like if I kept moving bit by bit then i could dip and not explain Like eight hours could subtract you from whatever still remained Like a mile could make a difference, like it could erase the pain Gold is strange when you consider what we put it through for proof Bite it, burn it, beat it flat, then call it valuable if true I was doing something similar with everything I knew Trying hard enough to test us that I nearly tested through I had 1 hand around the handle, 1 already letting go & somewhere in the midst of it, I found a vein of gold Not enough to make me certain, not enough to make me whole Just enough to make a silent exit feel considerably more Gold, gold, look what I almost left behind Packed between my eyesight taking hold up from my mind, Gold, gold, crazy that it chose to shine Only when I wasn’t looking, only once I’d left the mine I don’t know what you call it when departure misses start When the bags start speaking out and they’re waiting by the car Cause I’ve gotten good at leaving down to something like an art Until 1 ordinary day changes my plans to feel too far I had somewhere else to wake up, somewhere else to disappear Someone waiting full of hope, someone nowhere near from here And the more that I pictured it, the sadder it appeared, Till the thought of actually doing it became more unclear You never asked me not to go, you didn’t know enough to plead Maybe you had clocked the packing, maybe you had clocked me Moving differently around you, keeping half of me discreet Making exits out of errands, doing absence by degrees Then your body met my body and I stopped accounting blame Not because a bed can fix us, not because the past had changed Nothing holy happened to me, nothing suddenly made sense I just wanted to be with you when I could have wanted less And maybe that’s the part of this I’m least prepared to know I can amputate a person and be fine with letting go, But something yellow surfaced where I’d sworn there wasn’t gold And I hated that I saw it right when I was almost gone Gold, gold, crazy that it chose to shine Only when I wasn’t looking, only once I’d left the mine I don’t know what you call it when departure misses start When the bags start speaking out and they’re waiting by the car Cause I’ve gotten good at leaving down to something like an art Until 1 ordinary day changes my plans to feel too far There’s fool’s gold and there’s real gold and I’ve mixed them up before So I’ve learned to drag a thumbnail down the surface of the ore Learned that pretty isn’t proof and being wanted isn’t more Learned to question every yellow thing that washes to the shore Gold is soft enough for teeth marks, soft enough to keep the dent Every pressure leaves its evidence, but will not change the element Maybe that is why I thought of it lying where we slept Something doesn’t have to be untouched to still be what it is I wasn’t stuck beside you, there was nothing in my way, There was gasoline and mileage, there was somewhere else to stay There was someone I could drive to, there was every chance to change And the fact that I could choose it made me notice what I’d trade So don’t mistake my staying for me having nowhere else to go There was somewhere and somebody, I was closer than you know I had started moving pieces like a quiet domino Then the smallest thing between us put its finger on the gold Gold, gold, look what I almost left behind Had the road already waiting, had the leaving organized Gold, gold, I had weighed it light, Till I held the other option and it didn’t weigh as right Now the bags are sitting differently, though nothing’s been unpacked Every zipper has my fingerprints, every shirt remembers that There’s an eight-hour road Still waiting like an unused paragraph And a version of this evening that I cancelled after that. I’m not promising forever, would cheapen what I mean I won’t dip a broken object into gold and call it clean I won’t turn what hurt between us into something it has never been But I won’t scratch away the yellow just because it isn’t sheen Maybe gold is just an element that doesn’t know it’s rare more