From the recording Coming Back for You
I wrote this song as an assignment in a songwriting class led by Amy Speace at Rocky Mountain Song School. We were asked to identify a time in our life where things changed from one moment to the next, and life was never the same again. Then we were paired up and told our stories to the other person, then we wrote each others stories into song.
My partner was a man named Kevin and he told me about walking back to his house one day, seeing it in the distance and realizing he couldn't take his heart home with him. He described feeling like he took his heart out of his body and buried it that day. While he was doing that he told himself that if life ever made sense to him he'd come back for it.
All the details in the song come from what he told me. It's my sng but it's Kevin's story.
Lyrics
VERSE 1
He was 12 years old, a mile from home
when something stopped him dead in his tracks
He couldn’t go on, couldn’t stay there
and he couldn’t no he couldn’t go back
He couldn’t walk the plank to that white front door
and die for a place called home
The youngest of five, lived in a house
where everybody lived alone
VERSE 2
It was late October late afternoon
The fields were dry and brown
There was nobody else so he said to himself
As he kneslt down on the ground
If I ever make sense of this life that I’m living
I know what I’m goona do
Then he buried his heart in the cold dry ground
And he broke himself in two
CHORUS
Sometimes to survive, just to stay alive
this is what you have to do
no matter what it takes, no matter where I go
I swear, I swear I am coming back for you
VERSE 3
Hen he turned 24, locked up again,
something stopped him dead in his tracks
he couldn’t go on, couldn’t stay there
and he couldn’t no he couldn’t go back
the walls of his cell were the walls of his mind
were the walls of his life from the start
and he fell to his knees, begging to be free
when he heard this voice from his heart
CHORUS
(con’t)
Coming Back for You pg 2
BRIDGE
And he was broken, broken, open, open
Inside, inside, inside, in silence
He was broken, broken, open, open
See the mirror, mirror, mirror getting clearer
VERSE 4
So now I’m here at 50 years,
something stops me dead in my tracks
I can’t go on, I can’t stay here,
I have to yes I have to go back
Cause I see these boys down on their knees
burying their hearts in the dirt
and I kneel right down and pull them in I say son, son
I know how that hurts
CHORUS
Sometimes to survive
Just to stay alive
This is what we have to do
We can heal ourselves when we help someone else
That’s why, that’s why I’m coming back for you