Regret.

I want to lean on the prow
Of an anchored ship
Set to sail come morning
Set to sail for a land I don't know
Whose language I don't know
Who does not know my own.

With cigarette in hand
And some smoke in the night
There's always fire within
And a need for forgiveness
For all those things that no one
Ever considers to be wrong.

I want to leave everything
Start anew in a corner of earth
That only exists for beginnings
Me and a thousand nameless brothers
Bound to the same vague escape
Sworn to the same deliverance.

But I know that come dawn
My place in the prow will be empty
I'll be buying tobacco ashore
In the set price of docked salesmen
With the same coin that everyone uses;
Maybe I'll buy a map with the change.

In the whole wide world there's no place
No place I can die a different man
No place I will not wish for ships once again
There's not a single land to teach me
The crippling feeling of regret
For leaving everything behind.
Not a single mound of earth or flesh
To make me feel that, once, I was someone
Whose loss was irreparable enough
That no cigarette, ship or faraway land
Could ever hope to wash away.