We Take Turns

Intro

Verse 1

We were thirteen at Josh's party,
and I couldn't find the words.
You were the first thing I was sure of
in a world I hadn't learned.
We had a little while, maybe,
before I let you go.
I was too scared of who I was
to let somebody know.

Verse 2

Then a whole life happened in between,
and I never said your name,
till a photograph in twenty-seventeen
brought it back to me again.
I went looking, half afraid
you'd forgotten I was there,
and you answered like the years between
were nothing but the air.

Chorus

And we take turns.
When I can't stand, you hold me up.
When you fall, I'm there.
We take turns carrying
what neither one can bear.
Nobody keeps the score here.
Nobody's paid or owed.
We just take turns, love,
down the same long road.

Verse 3

You stayed the year they took the kids.
You stayed when I came apart,
when the cancer and the medicine
made a stranger of my heart.
You could have walked a hundred times.
There were doors in every wall.
And every time you stayed, love,
like you never saw them at all.

Verse 4

And I've held the crutches twice now,
both ankles, one by one.
I've sat in all the waiting rooms
till the waiting rooms were done.
And now the light is leaving,
and you're scared of where it goes,
so I'll learn to tell you colors.
I'll describe the world I know.

Chorus

Bridge

I lost my mind, and you kept it for me
till I could find my way.
You're losing the light, so I'll keep it for you
and read it to you every day.
Thirteen years old, I let you go.
I'm never doing that again.

Final Chorus

So we take turns.
When I can't stand, you hold me up.
When you fall, I'm there.
We take turns carrying
what neither one can bear.
Nobody keeps the score here.
Nobody's paid or owed.
We just take turns, love,
all the way home.

Outro

I've got you.
You've got me.
We take turns.

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