Paper Forest (In the Afterglow of Rapture) Songtext
von Emmy the Great

You′re not unlucky, you're just not very smart.
These things will never leave you – they′re as close as you can get
To a blueprint for the future – but you can call it fate.
It's like these days I have to write down almost every thought I've held,
So scared I am becoming of forgetting how it felt,
And these fears they will unravel me one day,
But still I am afraid.

But I′m blessed-
More or less, more or less-
Standing in the afterglow of rapture with the words the rapture left.

Now you′re blessed amongst all women,
Now a man who's very good,
He tells you how you feel until your life is understood,
And he leads you through it arm in arm as though
There was a map to guide the way.
Now you write because you love him, now you write because he′s kind,
You write so much, you look up and you wrote yourself behind,
And you're standing in a labyrinth of paper and the map has been erased.


But you′re blessed-
More or less, more or less-
Standing in the afterglow of rapture with the words the rapture left.
Are you blessed?
More or less, more or less?
Now you're standing in the afterglow of rapture,
But there is no rapture left.

Oh come, and we will celebrate the things that make us real,
The things that break us open, the things that make us feel
Like these accidental meetings up and partings of the way
Are not so much our choice but in the blood of how we′re made,
It's like the way I have to write down almost everything I see,
So that the record does obscure the thing the record used to be,
And I know I'm not unlucky,
I was just born this way.

But I′m blessed.

Now a paper forest grows up in the supermarket aisles,
The baby born with teeth looks at its mother and it smiles,
And we all fall down
Like wind blows through the paper forest.
And a paper forest grows up in the supermarket aisle
Alarm clock fingers turn they′re counting seconds like they're miles
And you say, "Wake up now, ′cause I can see no paper forest."