July On Fire

Forty days
and the sky has turned white

Nobody sleeps on this side of the river
The windows are open and it doesn't help
There's a man on a balcony at four in the morning
smoking a cigarette he doesn't want
The dogs have stopped barking at strangers
The tar on the road has gone soft as a promise
And the town has agreed, without saying it out loud,
to move slowly and to mean what it says

You came down the stairs with your hair pulled up
and that look you get when you've been thinking too long
You didn't ask me how I was, and I was grateful
because I'd have lied, and it was too hot to lie
There's no shade left anywhere in this city
The trees are standing there like they're embarrassed
And whatever we've been carrying since April
is out here in the open now, sweating with us

Let it burn, July, let it burn
Nobody's pretending anymore
There's no cool room left in this whole town
where a lie could stay alive
Let it burn, July, let it burn
Say the thing you came to say
Say it now, say it to me
It's too hot to be afraid

I've watched you drink water like it's a decision
I've watched you hold the glass against your neck
We've been polite to each other since the spring came
and politeness is the first thing the heat takes
The neighbours are arguing with the windows open
and nobody's closing them, and nobody minds
Everyone's honest in the fourth week of a heatwave
It's the one good thing this weather ever did

Let it burn, July, let it burn
Nobody's pretending anymore
There's no cool room left in this whole town
where a lie could stay alive
Let it burn, July, let it burn
Say the thing you came to say
Say it now, say it to me
It's too hot to be afraid

And when it finally breaks
and it will, it always breaks
when the first drop hits the pavement
and the whole street comes outside
I don't want to go back
to the way we were in the spring
I want to keep this
this terrible, honest heat

You said it at eleven, standing in the doorway
and the air didn't move and the words just stayed there
I didn't answer straight away, I let it sit
because some things deserve the whole minute
And then I said mine, and mine was worse
and you laughed, and I laughed, and the fan kept turning
And we sat on the floor where the tiles were coldest
like two people who had finally put something down

Let it burn, July, let it burn
Nobody's pretending anymore
There's no cool room left in this whole town
where a lie could stay alive
Let it burn, July, let it burn
We said the things we came to say
We said them out loud, we said them here
It was too hot to be afraid

Forty-one days
and the sky is still white