Blues Rock / Dark Americana
Room for the Quiet
After a relationship ends, a man keeps the television running to avoid the silence. One evening, he finally turns it off.
Verse 1
You left your key beside the sink.
The taxi pulled away.
I left the television on
For thirty nights and days.
I slept out on the sofa.
I woke to selling cars.
The voices kept on talking
Till half past four or five.
Chorus
Leave some room for the quiet.
Leave the empty chair.
I keep turning up the volume
Like it puts you there.
There’s a month of things I’m saying
To a door that doesn’t move.
Leave some room for the quiet.
Let the quiet tell the truth.
Verse 2
You said, “We keep on hurting.”
I said, “That’s what people do.”
You folded up the blue work shirt
I’d left across your chair.
Now every night I win the fight
I never won that day.
I tell the room my reasons.
The room has none to say.
Chorus
Leave some room for the quiet.
Leave the empty chair.
I keep turning up the volume
Like it puts you there.
There’s a month of things I’m saying
To a door that doesn’t move.
Leave some room for the quiet.
Let the quiet tell the truth.
Bridge
Tonight I set the remote down.
The screen went dark at last.
I heard the upstairs neighbor laugh.
I heard the pipes inside the wall.
I took your cup down from the shelf
And washed it with my own.
I put it in the cupboard.
I left the cupboard closed.
Final chorus
Leave some room for the quiet.
Leave the empty chair.
I can hear the street below me.
I can hear the evening air.
I won’t spend another hour
Telling you why you were wrong.
Leave some room for the quiet.
I’ve been talking far too long.
Outro
I slept back in the bedroom
For the first time since you’d gone.