Esther was born in Mile End where I stayed back in September of 07, with my lover, at his half brothers shared house that housed roughly about too many people for it's smoke stained walls to hold
And the carpet had tyre tracks that lead their way out the back to a yard no larger than two king beds, where a chair quietly sat, wearing pennies like a hat displaying the change that can't be spent
Esther married a man they had six kids, six of them hers, five of them his Still he raised the other man's like she was his own And maybe it was curse for the sin before the birth, is what my mother always heard Esther painfully say
Cos Geraldine was the daughter of an American soldier, and he never got to hold her, she never heard his name She never heard a thing at all, she spoke in signs but how her voice roared when her sister took her life and made five four, but not the first to go
You see Pauline's body quickly wore down like my love for London Town The filthy tubes, the hot underground and the welcome to London cold The bodegas on every street selling everything but what I need Just give me pills, her pills weren't cheap, more a thief than a disease
And as she's lying in her bed, I hang a paper crane over her head Too young to know to the full extent just what is coming next And Esther's lying in that home with the stench of neglect and memories gone, saying Pauline isn't well can you keep your prayers with her
But Esther doesn't have long to go, so she goes in peace they don't let her know; your daughter was buried a week ago, and we're all broken but you won't be Esther was born in Mile End, where I stayed back in September of 07 with my lover