"Starry Stairs," from the album "The Stand Ins"
by Okkervil River
INTRO:
E / E / G#m / G#m
C#m / B / A / A
F#m / F#m / C#m / C#m
B / B / C#m B / A
VERSE:
E
They asked for more.
G#m C#m B
(What do you think this fan club is for?)
A F#m
I slithered up each rose corridor.
C#m B C#m B
I kept a warm, safe place at my core,
A
before I lost it.
E
They asked for blood.
G#m C#m B
What do you think this woman's made of?
A F#m
I stuck a small, thin pin in my thumb.
C#m B C#m B
They dreamt a low, long line to be crossed--
A
and I crossed it.
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CHORUS:
B C#m
I'm alive, but a different kind of alive
B C#m B A
than the way I used to be.
B C#m
I retire to a split white smile to be seen
B C#m B A
in an old stag magazine.
(VERSE)
And this girl's eyes,
when they were roughly wrenched open, I
could see a starry stair up your thigh.
You hid behind your hair (oh, but I
saw you were smiling),
(CHORUS)
B C#m
while all these guys, all these curious sets of eyes,
B C#m B A
safe behind a TV screen,
B C#m
I let them pry, pick apart and hang up to dry
B C#m B A B C#m B A
almost every piece of me.
N.C.
(If you don't love me, I'm sorry.)
INTERLUDE:
[SAME AS INTRO / VERSE]
(VERSE)
Oh, what a trip.
Oh, what a shimmering silver ship.
Oh, what a hot half-life I half-lived.
And the stripes and stars, how they stripped
off of the siding
when my life ripped
off from the part that played as a kid
into the part that blazed through your lids
to find a warm, safe place and to sit,
curled up, inside it.
(CHORUS)
So here's "goodbye," from the part that's staying behind
to the part that has to leave,
to the sublime lips that were never spoiled by a line,
to the face inside the beam,
OUTRO:
B C#m B A
who wasn't me.
B C#m B A
Who wasn't me, oh no no,
B C#m B A
She's not me, oh oh.
