Put Your Name on the Lease

If you mean what you say

Your toothbrush owns a corner
Your shirts command a chair
You cook for me on Wednesdays
But your post goes somewhere else
You call this place our kitchen
When the evening's feeling sweet
Then say labels make you nervous
When I mention keys and fees
I don't need a diamond
Or a speech up on the roof
I need someone on the paperwork
A promise with some proof

My father signed three mortgages
Then vanished from them all
I made avoidance sound like freedom
So I'd never watch it fall

Put your name on the lease
Put your half beside my half
A page is not love
But love shows up in facts
Bring the boxes, bring the history
Bring the fear you never speak
If you mean that this is ours
Put your name on the lease

Ink dries
Love lives

At lunch I called my mother
Asked what I had never asked
She said, "Your father's leaving
Was his choice, it's not your past"
I met you at the office
With my payslips in a file
Read every line before I signed
You waited, didn't smile

I cleared the second wardrobe
But I kept one shelf my own
That night we labelled boxes
Argued where the records go

Put your name on the lease
Put your half beside my half
A page is not love
But love shows up in facts
Bring the boxes, bring the history
Bring the fear you learned to speak
You said this home is ours
And you put your name on the lease

I thought a signature would trap me
Like the silence trapped my mother
Now I know the line I write
Doesn't make me him, it makes me answer

Put our names on the lease
Leave some room for who we are
Love is more than paper
But it lives in what we keep
Bring the boxes, bring the history
Bring the fear we used to keep
We said this home is ours
And put our names on the lease

Two keys
Two names
One lease