they won’t find tears on our bodies.

they won’t find tears on our bodies. OR: It won’t be written on a Billboard so let’s do it here and now

Lyrics
far away from hospitals
city roads in covered in snow
and shaky memories of me

china in our living rooms
cold sheets, empty shoes
no, a monster doesn’t have to ask please

they won’t find tears on our bodies
just you holding me, just you and me

for 4 months an old heart cried
then the man in black followed his bride
Ben could you really wait like this?
it won’t be written on a sign

magnetic juice, embedded heat
it was never really ours to keep
so before this song ends
lay here, come down and sing with me

they won’t find tears on our bodies
just you holding me, just you and me

let me let you go
as we came,with sparkles in our eyes
cos one of us will slip, when the other comes untied
if you’re in, I’m in
we’ll leave the others round the yard to spread our sin

follow me in

Credits:
Additional vocals: Marie Kjaer Hoier

Background Story:
I wrote “they won’t find tears on our body” back in October 2008 on an acoustic guitar.

The song was inspired in part by Johnny Cash’s death in September 2003 – exactly four months after his wife June Carter. That month I came across Sarah Vowell’s brilliant retelling of their life story on This American Life called “The Greatest Love Story of the 20th Century”. I remember thinking how cruel it must have seemed, after a lifetime of struggle and romance to finally be together, that Johny Cash would be sentenced to a life alone….practically waiting to die.

Many years before he had sung, “Should you go first, or if you follow me, Will you meet me in Heaven someday“. Surely waiting is a worse fate, and luckily for him it was only 4 months.

“they won’t find tears…” is about not following and not waiting. After writing the song I had noticed the opposite themes of following and waiting in Death Cab For Cutie’s Plans and in Iron & Wine’s Naked As We Came. And so I altered the lyrics to be more of a response to those songs.

The title (and alternative title) came from the Japanese play The Love Suicides at Amijima, which is indirectly related to the theme of not waiting. At the conclusion of the play the star-crossed lovers meet and the protagonist Jihei tells his lover Koharu, “No matter how far we walk, there’ll never be a spot marked ‘For Suicides’. Let us kill ourselves here. Let us leave no trace of tears upon our dead faces.”

And so all of these stories had some influence on the final version of “they won’t find tears on our body”.