After All Lyrics

by Dar Williams

Go ahead, push your luck

Find out how much love the world can hold

Once upon a time I had control

And reined my soul in tight



[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricenter.com/e80266-dar_williams~after_all_lyrics.html ]
Well the whole truth

It's like the story of a wave unfurled

But I held the evil of the world

So I stopped the tide

Froze it up from inside



And it felt like a winter machine 

That you go through and then

You catch your breath and winter starts again

And everyone else is spring bound



And when I chose to live

There was no joy - it's just a line I crossed

It wasn't worth the pain my death would cost

So I was not lost or found



And if I was to sleep

I knew my family had more truth to tell

And so I traveled down a whispering well

To know myself through them 



Growing up, my Mom had a room full of books

And hid away in there

Her father raging down a spiral stair

'Til he found someone

Most days his son


And sometimes I think

My father, too, was a refugee

I know they tried to keep their pain from me

They could not see what it was for



But now I'm sleeping fine

Sometimes the truth is like a second chance

I am the daughter of a great romance

And they are the children of the war



Well the sun rose with so many colors 

It nearly broke my heart

It worked me over like a work of art

And I was a part of all that



So go ahead, push your luck

Say what it is you've got to say to me

We will push on into that mystery

And it'll push right back

And there are worse things than that

'Cause for every price


And every penance that I could think of

It's better to have fallen in love

Than never to have fallen at all



'Cause when you live in a world

Well it gets in to who you thought you'd be

And now I laugh at how the world changed me

I think life chose me after all