She prays the lights stay green all night

She prays the traffic doesn't slow

And the knots that tie her stomach are only butterflies



Only butterflies, fly by every day

While your waiting on a man, waiting on a man to show



There he stands behind the door

She reaches for her coat to go

And she wanders away in a dream

She wanders away to a dream



As she threads her way home through the neon washed alleyways

She flirts with the shadows and skirts round the victims

Of a night that'll sleep through the day

That casts out its refugees and throws out its debris



She turns the key in a lock to a fairy tale world

That she guards with her ghosts of faithful familiars

Who attend to her shrine in a patchwork cathedral

Observing the ritual with silent compassion and prayers



On the candlelit edges of a tightening circle

She arranges the photographs faded and yellowing

Memories left of her friends and her family

Respectfully turned to the wall



She turns up the sound on a second hand radio

And drowns out the noise of the world that she lives in

Her conscience her witness her life is her courtroom

And the man she left waiting

Is waiting to murder a day





(written by tony banks and fish, from the 1991 album 'still' by tony banks, virgin, tcv 2658)