The Thief of Unlived Tuesdays

A velvet-coated thief sells the Tuesdays people never quite lived. Ticking percussion, muted trumpet, and cabaret trip-hop give the crime a sly charm before every stolen minute starts remembering who it belonged to. LYRICS: Vito wore a velvet coat With pockets stitched in blue He could lift a silver wristwatch Or a week from under you Not Monday with its bad breath Not Friday dressed in wine He only stole the Tuesdays People thought they left behind From commuters half-awake From gamblers down on luck From lovers in the doorway Of a bus that never stuck He’d fold the day like paper Slip it clean beneath his vest And sell it uptown later To the people buying rest Madame Meridian smiled With diamonds in her teeth Said, “Everybody wastes a little Everybody thieves” He was the thief of unlived Tuesdays Selling time by candlelight A lunch hour here, a childhood there A longer kiss goodnight But a day is not a button You can cut from someone’s sleeve And the smallest stolen Tuesday Still remembers how to grieve At Central Station midnight By the coffee kiosk steam He saw a woman crying Like she’d misplaced half a dream She said, “I swear I had a daughter Or a name inside my mouth” Then she shook her head and laughed it off And caught the train down south Vito checked his pocket Felt the Tuesday warm and bright He saw balloons, a hospital A newborn fist of light Then his own hand started trembling Then his own heart came undone For the baby in that Tuesday Was his little vanished one Her crib became a shadow Her laugh became a thread And every photo on his dresser Showed an empty bed instead He was the thief of unlived Tuesdays Selling time by candlelight A lunch hour here, a childhood there A longer kiss goodnight But a day is not a button You can cut from someone’s sleeve And the smallest stolen Tuesday Still remembers how to grieve He ran to Madame Meridian Where the rich bought second dawns Where old men leased December And debutantes bought proms Behind the red velvet curtain In the market under clocks There were Tuesdays cut in ribbons There were years in little boxes One piece bought a yacht trip One bought twenty minutes more For a dying man to hear his son Come running through the door One became a perfect breakfast One became a wedding dance His daughter’s day was scattered Into everybody’s second chance Vito screamed, “Give back the morning Give back the room, the nurse, the rain Give back the first cry in the hallway Give me back her name” Madame tapped her ledger Said, “You sold what you could steal Now you want the world refunded Just because the wound is real?” Then his memory started thinning Like a candle in a storm He forgot her favorite blanket He forgot her sleeping form But he carved her name in his palm Before the letters left his head And he read it like a prayer To the daughter almost dead So he cracked the clocks at midnight With a crowbar made of bone Opened every Tuesday cage And sent the lost days flying home Back to nurses, back to teachers Back to dishwashers and wives Back to all the tiny hinges Holding up enormous lives People woke with sudden birthdays With a joke they almost told With a road they should have taken With a hand they should have held Then the market started starving Time came howling for its due And Vito knew the final price Was the only thing he knew He was the thief of unlived Tuesdays Till he paid what thieves must pay He gave up every Tuesday From his body’s future days No more Tuesday coffee No more Tuesday morning sun But one cry filled the hospital And his daughter had begun Now on Mondays he brings flowers On Wednesdays he brings bread On Thursdays he tells stories By his little daughter’s bed And every week skips strangely Where his Tuesdays used to be But she laughs like time forgiven And he calls that mercy Roots Roamer Records