This song is meant to be sung to the tune of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.  Not that it’s a patch on the original, of course,

.

.

I knew a girl who was lost before
Her ship was wrecked but she reached the shore
(But I could never get you to read Shakespeare)
Her world sank with her brother’s mast
“What country, friends, is this?” she asked
The captain answered her: “This is Illyria – “

By day you walk our marble halls
Her physics chalked upon the walls
Her memories make these mysteries familiar
I scan you like a page of text
But your prophecy won’t reveal what’s next
And for all my skill I can’t translate Illyria

You’re a comedy with a violent core
I’m a tragedy clutching at your straw
You wonder if the whiskey makes it clearer
Well, I drink to get rid of the taste
Of the blood she coughed up on my face
You were the storm that wrecked her ship, Illyria

I’ve died more times than I care to note
How the blade lay smiling in my throat
But I never really knew death till it took her
She was shaking while her insides tore
And I lay helpless on the floor
As before my eyes you cracked her soul, Illyria

Now you don the mask and fill the role
But this willow cabin calls no soul
There’s no one left within the house to hear
Illyria, you’re a blue-veined shell
And we both deserve to burn in hell
But you are all I’ve left of her, Illyria

And while I teach you how to breathe
You try to autopsy my grief
Because you cannot grasp why I weep for her
Her body fits you like a glove
But you are not the girl I love
You still don’t know how to weep for me, Illyria