dar williams – after all lyrics

go ahead, push your luck
find out how much love the world can hold
once upon a time i had control
and reined my soul in tight

well the whole truth
is like the story of a wave unfurled
but i held the evil of the world
so i stopped the tide
froze it up from inside

and it felt like a winter machine
that you go through and then
you catch your breath and winter starts again
and everyone else is spring bound

and when i chose to live
there was no joy, it’s just a line i crossed
it wasn’t worth the pain my death would cost
so i was not lost or found

and if i was to sleep
i knew my family had more truth to tell
and so i traveled down a whispering well
to know myself through them

growing up, my mom had a room full of books
and hid away in there
her father raging down a spiral stair
till he found someone
most days his son

and sometimes i think
my father, too, was a refugee
i know they tried to keep their pain from me
they could not see what it was for

but now i’m sleeping fine
sometimes the truth is like a second chance
i am the daughter of a great romance
and they are the children of the war

well the sun rose with so many colors
it nearly broke my heart
and worked me over like a work of art
and i was a part of all that

so go ahead, push your luck
say what it is you’ve got to say to me
we will push on into that mystery
and it’ll push right back
and there are worse things than that

’cause for every price
and every penance that i could think of
it’s better to have fallen in love
than never to have fallen at all

’cause when you live in a world
well it gets in to who you thought you’d be
and now i laugh at how the world changed me
i think life chose me after all

- dar williams lyrics