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A piano ballad sung from outside the story, scoring the silence after a door closes. About being the thing too heavy to take along — and the small forgotten quiet that begins to rise once everything else is gone.
Lyrics
[Intro] [Solo piano, simple chord figure, room tone, the sound of a house that has just gotten quiet] [Verse 1] There's a man inside the doorway And the doorway doesn't know That the life he held against it Has been told to let it go He is standing in the hallway He is standing in the rain That is falling in the kitchen Of the house that used to know him [Pre-Chorus] And the question he can't ask aloud The one he keeps inside Is whether he was something taken Or something left behind [Chorus] She didn't take the silence She didn't take the years She didn't take the person Who had carried both their fears She walked out the doorway And he just stayed in place And the thing she left behind her Had a face she used to love The thing she left behind [Verse 2] Now the work is his to carry Every wall and every weight Every choice she made together He is making now too late There's a lifetime in the closets There's a marriage in the walls And the man inside the hallway Has to answer when it calls [Pre-Chorus] And nobody tells the one who leaves The one who walks away That the one who stays behind the door Is the one who has to pay [Chorus] She didn't take the silence She didn't take the years She didn't take the person Who had carried both their fears She walked out the doorway And he just stayed in place And the thing she left behind her Had a face she used to love The thing she left behind [Bridge] But somewhere in the breaking Of the man against the wall A small forgotten quiet Started rising through it all Like a key inside a pocket He'd forgotten he had on Like a road outside the window He had not been looking on Maybe being left behind Is the way that you get free Maybe everything she didn't want Was the everything of me [Final Chorus] She didn't take the silence She didn't take the years She didn't take the person Who had carried both their fears She walked out the doorway And he just stayed in place And the thing she left behind her Had a face she used to love The thing she left behind The thing she left behind [Outro] The thing she left behind