She draws the pearls up to her lips   Like so many stars, so many ships   Shooting and sinking under her coat   It's too much to say and it's too much to hope      She feels the flower filling her throat   She feels the watcher beginning to gloat   Dangerous thoughts for a young little girl   Wrapped up in bed, safe from the world      Slipping as silent as snow on her bed   A beautiful murder unravels itself in her head   She feels every nail every stake he drove in   The arc of the eyebrows he etched into her skin      And now all the birds are flying away   I wish you would too but you only stay   To ask me and ask me and ask me again   Ask me and ask me and ask me again   But you know what you know and you know I'll give in   You want to go where nobody's been   You want to know what's at the end      Just as the tiger enters her slip   To give her the gift of the river caught in her teeth   To twist and to turn a long silent thread   All silver and knotted and begging itself to be said      Just like the violets filling her room   She feels empty space beginning to bloom   A terrible price to exact for that   Once you go there you can never get back   I never wanted to be tough as that      Oh, from the end   Oh, at the end   Oh, it's the end   Of me