The Pacific’s Waters

Julia had everything at 21
A smile that killed and eyes that stun
She was the queen of Queen Street—a prize to be won

She married a man her family never loved
Who was almost everything she’d always dreamed of
He spoke of journeys to places where the hard earth gave way
To the vastness of the ocean, beaches of sand and clay

So they moved from the big city to the small town
Where no rushing cars no midnight sounds
Could hurt the start of a life
That needed no one else around

There she became the mother of two and the wife of none
She had a husband who didn’t count as one
Not for ten long years
She had given up for love

He would come home every night to pretend she wasn’t there
Til one day she made it true, knowing it was unfair
She kissed the faces of her children that last night as they slept
Money for a ticket and pictures of them the only things that she kept

She took a train out of Sudbury, Ontario
Going west along the Canadian Railroad
She watched her fears run beside tracks that twisted like a crookcd grin
Across the Northern Great Plains where she’d never been

Her eyes drifted over Manitoba and Saskatchewan
She thought of all the lives lived there that had come and gone
She held pictures of her children and fought back the tears
Equations of love left unbalanced by their trust and years

Through the Rockies she waited for the ocean to come
At Prince Rupert she stepped from the station into the setting sun
At the Pacific’s Waters she fell down to her knees
Mixing the salts of her body with those of the sea

She wondered if time would ever heal the wounds she felt
But knew there would still be the wound left by time, that had been dealt
By the death of a marriage she had watched slip away
Minute by minute, day by day

So Julia turned around as the sun left the empty beach
To face the road she always felt had been so out of reach
Her destination achieved, her hope finally allowed
She closed her eyes and wondered, “What happens now?”
She closed her eyes and wondered, “What happens now?”
She closed her eyes and wondered