Quiet, I Can Feel It

And I can feel it there in my most intimate relationships
This soft assimilation, this whole love-between-the-lines bullshit
I appreciate attention, but just don't know what to do with it
Can't attend, the tensions sit between me and what you'd find
Despite all contestation, I'm conditioned in my place and time
I wander 'round the boundary lines and bring them into being
But without me, then who would see the contradiction that is we?
I contradict you viciously so certain in my seeing

And me, I start to wonder, am I even still a boy?
Are imprints of gay culture just some residues of ways it was?
Call me daddy, call me pretty, call me home from some state, city
We paid the price of entry, but felt locked out all the same

So move back to the suburbs, though that don't mean what it used to
It's just crumbling roads and shadows and an hour to anywhere
Find the time to listen for some simple definition
Or a long form division between each step that led you there
Said nothing that you'd ever been was truthful to your feelings then
The truth is when you need them you, anxious, turned away
To paint a path dependent on some battles that your forebears won
Said, call me when the battle's done, then woke up in the fray