June 19 - Pale Green Things

There's a sense in which this is a strange song to be on The Sunset Tree. It takes place a long time later, and while the "your" in the first verse is clearly the person who The Sunset Tree is about, everything about this song feels... later. A different person with only the most general view of who the rest of the album was about.

What I get from this song is that forgiveness is hard and ugly and doesn't feel worth it and yet is necessary to avoid carrying frozen poison around with you. There are people who are in your memory if not in your life any more, and sometimes hating them was all that kept you going, but also it's what let them keep a hold of you.

There are people who aren't in my life that I probably won't ever go through a process of forgiving. They're not in my life, they don't impact me any more. They are forgotten. There's other people I remember every now and then, who might one day reach out. And I don't know what I'd say. I can't say it was all right because it wasn't. I don't think about them enough to have considered forgiveness. It happened and that's just the world we live in now.

But there's always hope growing in small shoots if you know where to look. I hope some of these people are better people now, but I don't hope it enough to find out.