Another Murder of a Day

She dreams China white
Behind her eyes of China blue
Her future wrapped in velvet
And her memories wrapped in warm cotton wool

And the coffee grounds
Are burying the hours that she killed
In another murder of a day
Her patience starts to crumble
Like a rock that turns to sand

And time breaks down to seconds
When you're waiting, waiting on a man
Waiting on a man

She's checking out the doorway
While she's checking out the guy
Whose drunk imagination is climbing up
The ladder of her silk clad thigh

And the cigarettes
Are burning up the hours that she killed
In another murder of a day

Her patience starts to crumble
Like a rock that turns to sand
And time breaks down to seconds
When you're waiting, waiting on a man
Waiting on a man, waiting on a man

It seems so long since yesterday
The time goes by so slow
When you're waiting on a man
Waiting on a man to show

She shivers in a cold sweat
That she's trying to ignore
As she wraps her shaking fingers
Round the loose change by the phone

She needs him more than she'll admit
And more than others need to know
She hopes the knots that tie
Her stomach are only butterflies

The time goes by so slow
When you're waiting on a man
Waiting on a man to show

She prays that no one pays attention
As she punches out the call
As she fumbles with the number
That the panic still doesn't show

She prays the lights stay green all night
She prays the traffic doesn't slow
And that the knots that tie
Her stomach are only butterflies

Only butterflies, fly by every day
While you're waiting on a man
Waiting on a man to show

There he stands behind the door
She reaches for her coat to go
And she wanders away in a dream
She wanders away to a dream

She threads her way home
Through the neon washed alleyways
She flirts with the shadows
And skirts round the victims

Of a night that'll sleep through the day
That casts out its refugees and throws out its debris
She turns the key in a lock to a fairytale world
That she guards with her ghosts of faithful familiars
Who attend to her shrine in the patchwork cathedral
Observing the ritual with silent compassion and prayers

On the candlelit edges of a tightening circle
She arranges the photographs faded and yellowing
The memories left of her friends and her family
Respectfully turned to the wall

She turns up the sound on a second hand radio
And drowns out the noise of the world that she lives in
Her conscience, her witness, her life is her courtroom
And the man she left waiting is waiting to murder a day