She dreams china white behind her eyes of china blue
Her future wrapped in velvet and her memories wrapped in warm cotton wool

And the coffee grounds
Are burying the hours that she killed
In another murder of a day

Her patience starts to crumble
Like a rock that turns to sand
And time breaks down to seconds
When you're waiting on a man

She's checking out the doorway while she's checking out the guy
Whose drunk imagination is climbing up the ladder of her silk clad thigh

And the cigarettes
Are burning up the hours that she killed
In another murder of a day

Her patience starts to crumble
Like a rock that turns to sand
And time breaks down to seconds
When you're waiting on a man

It seems so long since yesterday
The time goes by so slow
When you're waiting on a man, waiting on a man to show

She shivers in a cold sweat that she's trying to ignore
As she wraps her shaking fingers round the loose change by the phone
She needs him more than she'll admit and more than others need to know,
She hopes the knots that tie her stomach are only butterflies
The time goes by so slow
When you're waiting on a man, waiting on a man to show.

She prays that no one pays attention
As she punches out the call
As she fumbles with the number
That the panic still doesn't show
She prays the lights stay green all night
She prays the traffic doesn't slow
And the knots that tie her stomach are only butterflies

Only butterflies, fly by every day
While your waiting on a man, waiting on a man to show

There he stands behind the door
She reaches for her coat to go
And she wanders away in a dream
She wanders away to a dream

As she threads her way home through the neon washed alleyways
She flirts with the shadows and skirts round the victims
Of a night that'll sleep through the day
That casts out its refugees and throws out its debris

She turns the key in a lock to a fairy tale world
That she guards with her ghosts of faithful familiars
Who attend to her shrine in a patchwork cathedral
Observing the ritual with silent compassion and prayers

On the candlelit edges of a tightening circle
She arranges the photographs faded and yellowing
Memories left of her friends and her family
Respectfully turned to the wall

She turns up the sound on a second hand radio
And drowns out the noise of the world that she lives in
Her conscience her witness her life is her courtroom
And the man she left waiting
Is waiting to murder a day


(written by tony banks and fish, from the 1991 album 'still' by tony banks, virgin, tcv 2658)