Jamie Kept His Promises

Disclaimer: For those that know me personally, THIS IS NOT about my ex-husband whose name was Jamie. This is about someone else. My ex-husband did not keep promises.

Verse 1

Jamie kept his promises like bottles on a shelf

Washed the Sunday coffee cups, folded in himself

Smiled for all the photographs, stood where he should stand

But I could feel the weather in the tremble of his hands

He’d watch the evening windows like a ferry watches shore

Breathing like a metronome, counting something more

I held his quiet carefully, the way you hold a flame

Thinking time would teach his heart to love me just the same

Pre-Chorus

But there was always silence in the echo of his laugh

A shadow shaped like someone else, a future cut in half

Chorus

Jamie, you stayed, you stayed though you were breaking

Slept in my arms, but woke in someone else’s dream

I thought you loved me by the way you kept on making

Dinner from the ashes, peace from kerosene

I couldn’t make you happy, I could only keep you warm

And you held on to a winter I was never meant to thaw

Verse 2

He never said her name out loud, just turned his shoulder west

Read the weather in the headlines, kept the letters pressed

Between a book of borrowed faith and pay stubs in a ring

A quiet, faithful monologue to what he couldn’t bring

We moved the furniture around to try and shift the ache

Painted rooms and planted herbs that we could almost taste

But every house we built together had a door ajar

Like he was listening for footsteps from a street too far

Pre-Chorus

And I was counting blessings like a banker counts a till

While he was counting distances no map could ever fill

Chorus

Jamie, you stayed, you stayed though you were breaking

Slept in my arms, but woke in someone else’s dream

I thought you loved me by the vows we kept on saying

But vows don’t cure a hunger that outlives the in-between

I couldn’t make you happy, I could only keep you warm

You carried home a winter I was never meant to thaw

Bridge

Maybe love is not a rescue, not a task to solve

Not a lighthouse bright enough to pull a ghost to shore

I kissed the places grief had carved and called it sacred ground

But hollowness is honest; it keeps echoing the sound

I wanted to be water where your ashes turned to clay

But some things don’t grow gardens, they just teach you not to stay

Verse 3

Years go by like sparrows, and his hair went salt and smoke

Still the gentlest kind of weary in the spaces where he spoke

We pass in quiet grocery lines, he asks me how I’ve been

His eyes still searching windows for the life that might’ve been

And I have learned to bless him with a tenderness that knows

He did the best with broken, with a love he couldn’t hold

I forgive the room he couldn’t fill, the song he couldn’t start

And tuck away the proof of him still living in my heart

Chorus

Jamie, you stayed, you stayed though you were breaking

Slept in my arms, but woke in someone else’s dream

I thought you loved me, and you did in all the aching

But some loves are a compass to a place we’ll never be

I couldn’t make you happy, I could only keep you warm

You carried through a winter I was never meant to thaw

Julia O’Hara

Here is the link where you can purchase my CD, “The Songwriter”

https://elasticstage.com/juliaohara/releases/the-songwriter-album

Here is a link where you can purchase my CD, “Dreamcatcher”.

https://elasticstage.com/juliaohara/releases/dreamcatcher-album

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