I wrote this one in the middle of a rough patch. Not the dramatic kind. The kind where you are still in it, still together, but you have lost the thread and neither of you can work out where it went.
I kept going back over old ground. Trying to repair something that had already happened. You cannot fix the past, but that does not stop you standing in it, turning it over, looking for the piece you got wrong.
The willow came out of that. A tree that stood tall for years and then split. It is still a willow. It is still standing. It is just broken in a way everybody can see.
What I landed on by the end of writing it was that the repair is not the point. Forgiveness is. Not forgetting, and not pretending it did not happen, just deciding to stop pulling at it. Love does the rest, if you let it.
The tree does not go back to how it was. It just keeps growing.
Full lyrics
I know that you're hurting
I know that you gave up in us a long time ago
I know that you're fading
Like watching your footsteps melt in the snow
I know what you feel
Coz I hurt you and you can't forget
I know that you're hurting
And I know that we have to live with sorry and regret
But silence don't heal us
And distance just breaks us
I keep watching your back whilst in bed
I'm just sorry for the things that I said
Tell me where the love went
Is it written on this fallen down broken willow tree, oh
Tell me how your love went
When we carved our initials for everyone to see
Are we just broken
That broken willow tree
You don't even flinch now
When I reach for your hand in the dark
It feels like we're strangers
Like love is something that we forgot
You're tired of the fighting
And I'm tired of chasing ghosts
Neither one of us wants to say we're close to letting go
But silence don't heal us
And distance just breaks us
I keep watching your back in bed
I'm just sorry for the things that I said
Tell me where the love went
Is it written on that fallin' down broken willow tree, oh
Tell me how your love went
When we carved our initials for everyone to see
Are we just broken
That broken willow tree
Ooh, tree, yeah
That broken willow tree