Flightless Bird, American Mouth

Personally, I think this can go one of two ways. this could be about a boy in a race against time to save his lost loved one from a suicide inspired by his affair behind her back.

I was a quick-wit boy (I was a smart boy) diving too deep for coins (hoping for too much when I had an affair behind your back) all of your street light eyes wide on my plastic toys (but you knew about the affair and your shiny eyes had already been eyeing the old plastic bottle of pills I owned) then when the cops closed the fair (After you disappeared and the cops gave up on looking for you) I cut my long baby hair stle me a dog-eared map and called for you everywhere (I grabbed a map and went searching for you)

Have I found you? (Have I found you?) Flightless bird (the girl that refused to leave despite the pain I caused) Jealous, weeping (jealous over the girl I was with behind your back and crying) Or lost you? (Or have I already lost you?) American mouth Big pill looming (have you fallen prey to a pill-induced suicide?)

Now I'm a fat house cat (Now I'm a lonely man trapped in this world) Nursing my sore blunt tongue (cursing everthing with my foul mouth) Watching the warm poison rats cut through the wide fence cracks Pissing on magazine photos Those fishing lures thrown in the cold and clean Blood of Christ, mountain stream (as I watch rats walk through the broken fence and pee on old magazine photos scattered on the floor where there lies a stream of blood)

Have I found you? (Is this really you?) Flightless bird (the girl that never left me despite being able to?) Grounded, bleeding (Bleeding on the ground) Or lost you? (Or did I lose you?) American mouth (through that sweet mouth) Big pill, stuck going down (where that big pill got stuck going down.)

OR,

it could be about a boy's race against time to find his lost loved one who happened to be a troubled, broken girl he thought he could save from her self destructive path but the task ended up being to big. And so, she left without a word and took the guy's plastic bottle of pills and ran away. He reported her missing and when the cops gave up, he went out looking for her. Basically, the same interpretation as the first except that he didn't have an affair and she was just troubled, depressed, broken, and when it mentiones that she was "jealous and weeping", that jealousy might not have been due to another girl, but jealous of him because he's not going through what she is. He can live without that internal trauma she has to live with every day.

Basically, the two different interpretations are the same except for those two. I can't really decide, so some days I go with the first, while most other days I go with the second. This song could very well be taken literally and be about fat cats and rats pissing on magazines and it could mean something entirely different than what I think. But personally, that is what I think it is. I stand quite firm with these interpretations because I identify with them and everytime I hear it, it brakes my heart in a healing way.