You play piano with my waist, Scrabble with my heart,
use that Uno reverse card as a weapon against the soul behind my eyes. But I know better.
You live inside distorted mirrors, bragging about your own serenity,
because you don’t do feelings, you don’t do love.
“Un jeu d’enfants” it is when you go about your day without forming any bonds.
A bondless musician.
You play this game to your advantage, your cards kept close to your chest
even when you play solitaire.
You bribe your way around this world with all you have: white Monopoly money.
You can only exist inside a circus, where clowns cry because they miss you,
where you’re “tag” and they’re “it”.
You play, You play, You play
But you know it takes two to turn love into a game.
I play Sudoku with your silence, I add the missing numbers until I have you all figured out.
I turn our conversations into crosswords, until you’re too confused to call my bluff,
but not puzzled enough to accept that it’s game over for you.
Your poker face softens, and I call checkmate.
I’m the Joker disguised as the Queen of Hearts.
I am Simon and I say: “Tell me I’m your favorite game to play.”
I play, I play, I play
Until you start calling me by your name.
We look at each other the same way children look at empty playgrounds.
You’re screaming “Red light!”, I’m shouting “Green light!”
We both know the dangers, it’s safer not to move
It would be better to stay put, but we can’t
We’re too weak to be statues, we’re sandcastles in the rain.
We became each other’s lucky numbers, we’re always winners in this charade,
two star-crossed players stuck inside a video game.
We enjoy rolling dices, to kill the Hangman with imaginary letters,
our own private alphabet.
We’re past the tic-tac-toe stage of modesty, we were born for the rush,
The fear of losing.
We play, We play, We play
But only because no one else is on our level, when it comes to entertain.
It’s our way to say “I want you to stay”.
Still, they frown, they speculate.
They’re convinced that life isn’t a board game,
that it’s time for us to grow up, grow old,
We can only love if we behave.
They don’t want what’s ambiguous, they want to understand what we have, the truth,
they wonder where our feelings are at.
You could answer,
I could say,
We could give everything away,
But where’s the fun in that?