Neutral Milk Hotel: Oh Sister

Oh sister, don't be afraid of me
I won't be nailing you down in the nursery
Just like the rest of them did
With those watery, wandering fingers that slipped
That were supposed to be glorious and fine

Oh sister, won't you believe in me
I only wanted to be hard on your family
Here with you now in the zillionth infirmary
A mother makes frantic and drunk calls from Germany
All of the time

And oh sister, sweet brown and beulahry
Milk from your blisters on your grandmother's jewelery
Here in the parlor all naked in front of me
Watching the lights from the cracks making archery
Animal designs

Rose Wallace Goldeline just moves her mouth over anything
Fleshy free and flowering with oranges out in the open
But don't you waste your sins again
She don't need you
or won't fuck your friends
And you, you're American, so important boiling over
To prove that she must still exist
She moves herself about her fist
And never ever ever
About all those words you're wasting again
Some pretty bright and bubbly wondrous dream
You'd like to kill and claim
And claim her as your own

But don't you worry
All those dainty and dirty emotions just go away
And fade out on their own

Oh sister, now that we're grieving
Our fingers will falter
Our lungs will be leaking
All over each other and without even speaking
We'll know that it's over and smiling or greeting
Whatever comes next

And oh sister
You're getting married with some angry twister
That you'll have to carry home drunk every evening from the cemetery
And if he makes it back half alive you can bury him
Under your sheets

And oh sister
now that we're leaving
I can not imagine there is any meaning
forgetting you ever could once had the feeling that made you keep on
And pretend you were breathing
Of all of this world
And in an age of empty rings
I don't want to feel the thing
I don't even want to know
Rose Wallace Goldeline
Don't you hang that lie on me
All the way it goes and flows