Lyrics for Monday

Ghost
By Emily Saliers

There's a letter on the desktop
That I dug out of a drawer
The last truce we ever came to
In our adolescent war
And I start to feel the fever
From the warm air through the screen
You come regular like seasons
Shadowing my dreams

Well the Mississippi's mighty
But it starts in Minnesota
At a place that you could walk across
With five steps down
And I guess thats how you started
Like a pinprick to my heart
But at this point you rush right through me
And I start to drown

And there's not enough room
In this world for my pain
Signals cross and love gets lost
And time passed makes it plain
Of all my demon spirits
I need you the most
I'm in love with your ghost
I'm in love with your ghost

Dark and dangerous like a secret
That gets whispered in a hush
When I wake the things I dreamt about you
Last night make me blush
When you kiss me like a lover
Then you sting me like a viper
I go follow to the river
Play your memory like the piper

And I feel it like a sickness
How this love is killing me
But I'd walk into the fingers
Of your fire willingly
And dance the edge of sanity
I've never been this close
In love with your ghost

Unknowing captor
You'll never know how much you
Pierce my spirit
But I can't touch you
Can you hear it
A cry to be free
Oh I'm forever under lock and key
As you pass through me

Now I see your face before me
I would launch a thousand ships
To bring your heart back to my island
As the sand beneath me slips
As I burn up in your presence
And I know now how it feels
To be weakened like Achilles
With you always at my heels

This bitter pill I swallow
Is the silence that I keep
It poisons me, I can't swim free
The river is too deep
Though I'm baptized by your touch
I am no worse at most
In love with your ghost
You are shadowing my dreams
In love with your ghost

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Very brief update as I had the unexpected delight of being invited by to go see the Indigo Girls at Wolf Trap! They were phenomenal as -- well, I can't say as always, because I haven't seen them in 15 years, but very much as I remember them from several concerts in Chicago from the early 1990s. Girlyman opened for them and they were fantastic too, plus they came on and did several songs with the Indigo Girls who did a bunch from the new album and a bunch from Nomads, Indians, Saints, -- they did "Ghost" and made me cry, then "Hand Me Downs," then "Watershed," then "Chickenman" all in a row! And "Closer To Fine" and "Galileo" at the end. I ran into a bunch of the women from my pagan circle and their families (in their Xena t-shirts, hee)! Am very content and very tired and the kids' first day of school kicks off in five hours and I hope is not nauseated from my singing -- it was the kind of concert where the performers dropped entire verses and had the house lights turned up so the crowd would sing along.


Amy Ray and Emily Saliers onstage at Wolf Trap.


Amy is a producer for Girlyman, who opened for them.


They performed together late in the show...


...and a cappella at the start of the encore.


Here are Amy and Emily again at the end.