I had a true love from Hannibal   Where the Mississippi turns flat and wide   We’d lay out on the sandbars   And fall asleep to the barges and the fireflies   And I killed my true love from Hannibal   She was nineteen and I was twenty-two   Summer was ending and she was leaving soon   To study writing on the east coast   And I worked in my father’s shop   Fixing air conditioners and heating pumps   Going to college never made much sense to me   I wanted to keep my true love close to me      The summers are hot in Hannibal   The summers there are unbearable   So we’d steal down to the water’s edge   And cool off in the river’s ebb   One night we decided what we would do   Swim to the middle ‘til our strength gave out   Where the current was strong and deep   Together we’d be pulled down to sleep   So we swam ‘til our bodies were weak   I watched my true love get washed out to sea   I felt a terrible grip from beneath   The river took her but it didn’t take me      In St. Louis there’s a prison cell   It’ll be twelve more years ‘til I get out   When I do her father says he’ll shoot me down   If I don’t do it myself      Most days I just try and sleep   I dream of Hannibal when it was in between   It’s not quite day and it’s not yet night   We fall asleep to the barges and the fireflies