A Different Kind of Hunger
I grew up in a quiet house where love was never said out loud, but food was always offered. I've spent a lifetime trying to fill loneliness with literal food, and my weight is the receipt.
The house was always quiet, the words were never said
A million miles of silence in a warm and lonely bed
You never taught me how to read the language in your eyes
Just a long and endless winter underneath a set of sighs
I didn't know the word for it, the thing I couldn't see
The strange and aching emptiness that was growing inside me
'Cause you couldn't give me love, but you always gave me food
A quiet, simple offering I never understood
Is a perfect, desperate bargain that a lonely boy will make
To fill his heart with anything, for goodness gracious sake
And I've been trying to be full now, for thirty years or more
'Cause a starving heart will eat and eat, and still be hungry for... a different kind of hunger
And now I'm in the kitchen, and the sun is coming through
And every single meal I make, I'm thinking about you
I'm a good and careful father, I'm a good and caring man
I'm trying to provide them with the love I never can
Quite give myself, 'cause I don't know the taste of it for real
Just the quiet, hollow echo of another empty meal
'Cause you couldn't give me love, but you always gave me food
A quiet, simple offering I never understood
Is a perfect, desperate bargain that a lonely boy will make
To fill his heart with anything, for goodness gracious sake
And I've been trying to be full now, for thirty years or more
'Cause a starving heart will eat and eat, and still be hungry for... a different kind of hunger
And the body is a battlefield, a war I'll never win
Between the boy who's starving and the fat and broken man I'm in
And every single pound I lose, and every pound I gain
Is just a different kind of monument to the same and ancient pain
'Cause you couldn't give me love, but you always gave me food
A quiet, simple offering I never understood
Is a perfect, desperate bargain that a lonely boy will make
To fill his heart with anything, for goodness gracious sake
And I've been trying to be full now, for thirty years or more
'Cause a starving heart will eat and eat, and still be hungry for... a different kind of hunger
A different kind of hunger...
Still hungry for...
...more