when the sky was the color of cream,
and you started leaving messages on my answering machine
telling me that you were way across town and
would be home in a night or two.
i started keeping track of my losses.
there were only one or two i couldn't cover.
and up there against the milk while sky i saw
fleeting vestiges of you.
the way you vanished gradually
has made a bitter man of me.
and the way you vanished gradually,
has made a bitter man of me.

well, the ocean cleaves the rocks real clean.
i dropped my answering machine.
i watched the waves chew it into tiny little pieces of seafoam hissing in the air.
in the balance sheet i'd been keeping in my mind
i entered two hundred kroners to the left of the debit line.
it was what the machine had cost me.
it was a greater loss than i could bear.
i hear the wheels and knobs whirring down to this very day,
long after the ocean has washed it all away.
i heard the train go by last night.
and it's a slow train outta here, alright.
but the way you disappeared in slow degrees,
has made a very patient man of me.
yeah.