Royal City - "Cabbage Rolls" (the song on repeat exactly one week after she's moved out, when, out of the blue, she calls just to say 'hi,' and you catch yourself wondering if you've always answered phones with 'hey hey')

Why you gotta go breakin' my heart?

Royal City - "I Called But You Were Sleeping" (the song that comes to mind while thinking about all the times you would lay in bed next to her, who is fast asleep, but you would stay awake wondering if good times like these would ever end, and you can't help but smile as a small tear sheds from your eye)

Royal City - "I Called But You Were Sleeping":
You were always far away from me, even when we were holding hands. I called you this morning to try to find you near me, maybe to capture you, in a golden and shining cage, but you were wise my dear, for you slept. Of what do you dream my pretty one? I hope you dream of me, but I know that really you are thinking about faraway glittering spires and elephants in mirrored costume, and you could fly over it all, for it was yours. I will wait for you, here in this city, I will be here when you return to the ground.

Royal City - "Cabbage Rolls"
Horses, cabbages and birds, a little bit of twang. My wooden house. Just me there know, and the wide prairie holds me close at night instead of you, sweetheart, but I hear the grasses blowing and hear you thinking of me.

Royal City - "I Called But You Were Sleeping"
In the fall they use to bike there at night to look over the city. Steam could be seen rising as their bodies cooled down. The cold air would refresh as it entered their lungs and cooled the sweat on their skin. They would look out at the city below them and enjoy being; the cold slowly seeping in. When it went from refreshing to chilling, they would realize the moment couldn't last forever and they would head back. What they didn't notice, was the cold seeping into their hearts.

The steam on the window from the untouched coffee has evaporated to near nothing as i sit on the windowsill like any normal rainy day. Nothing torrential in this rain. Its not like the rain that suprises you, forces itself upon you, aiming for your bones. A wild rain that is a crazy as it is short, and just as lustfull. The rain that people talk about the next day, but not the day after. The one night stand rain.
No this rain is the light rain that is here for the long haul. No matter how you prepare for it and prevent it from getting to your flesh, it manages to soak into your heart.
I checked my machine after I woke up.
The steam from my beating heart makes it to see out the window.

Royal City - "I Called But You Were Sleeping" and "Cabbage Rolls"

But if I hadn’t said that, what might have been next? There might have been garlic tastings. There might have been ponds. There might have been block-print herons wading in the shallows. There could have been a long, narrow lane lined with black-and-white poplars. There would have been sledding on hills not high enough to be hills. Maybe there would have been a weathervane or a mailbox with a flag or something involving a barn. Maybe there would have been enough for me to realize what was was because of what I hadn’t said.

Royal City-"I Called But You Were Sleeping" (This is a song pregnant with regret, and could possibly be a stakler's theme song. I'm not sure. What I am sure of is an acoustic guitar song is almost always better with a xylophone accompaniment, Royal City understands this too.)

Royal City- "I Called But You Were Sleeping":

He counted the number of times it rang while he waited for her to answer. 1, 2, 3, 4 (what if she doesn’t answer….?), 5, 6. (she’s not going to answer…..)

He is begging to be remembered.
But she is too busy dreaming to notice.
It isn’t a fair song at all.
Because, at nighttime, I bet he thinks of her before he falls asleep.
As he lies in bed and watches the headlights of passing cars make shadows on the walls.

This man knows all distance is long distance.
It doesn’t matter whether it is 5 feet or 10,000 miles.
He knows distance is more than the amount of space between A and B.
It is the air between two people.
The silence on the other end of the line.
The quiet shift from first times to second thoughts.

This man is far, far away from his baby.

Royal City- "I Called But You Were Sleeping"

To one feels when they see someone that they love going so far away, but they see that it's irrelevant at how small the physical distance is, the emotional distance is overwhelming.

Royal City - "Cabbage Rolls"
Love is...
...those cabbage rolls as I swam in your ocean blue eyes at Cooper's Automotive. And when you professed to me your love of transfats, I knew that I could finally toss that bottle of ketamine and just be myself.

Royal City-"I Called But You Were Sleeping" (Please remember this song)

Royal City "I Called But You Were Sleeping"
Music that makes you feel like a small godly ghost is massaging the insides of your ribcage.

Love those drawings.
http://www.allmylittlewordsonline.com/

"Cabbage leaves are stuffed with filling and then baked, simmered or steamed in a covered pot. Generally eaten warm, often accompanied with a sauce, which varies by cuisine. In Finland and Sweden, stuffed cabbage roll is often served with bittersweet lingonberry jam." And, yes, here the raw material of relationships is filled with the meat of love, and served with a bittersweet offering…

Royal City - "I Called But You Were Sleeping" (not for contests)

Cabbage Rolls: (Awkward embrace. 14 and in love, they walk down the street in the heat, his hand on her hip. She hesitates, adjusts it, not afraid but inexperienced. He, shy but trying, abides. This must get easier.)

I Called But You Were Sleeping - The last song a yawning bear sings to the bear he loves as she drifts into hibernation.

Cabbage Rolls - Your fourth, really, really cold beer.

Royal City - "I Called But You Were Sleeping" (or pretending to)

Royal City - "Cabbage Rolls" - (mustard sauce)

Royal City - "I Called But You Were Sleeping" (one of the coolest 'phone' songs you'll hear)

Royal City - "Cabbage Rolls" (maximize the song potential by eating while listening to it)

Royal City -- "I Called But You Were Sleeping" (If you were to add up all the words that stormed the throat that flitted out like startled birds and all the things I said absent of anchor plus all the things spoken standing backward and all the things cried out while my hands and feet were on fire or breathed when the minutehand was wrong, plus all the things I said before I recalled whose door I was standing under and all the things that left my lips as the twisted wrecks of the lovely machines they were before leaving I’m afraid they would outweigh our hearts, so don’t.)

Royal City -- "I Called But You Were Sleeping" (The milky floated fog. The pea soup of dreamscape narrative. The most I can make of memory is a push in any direction, but every solid surface dissolves to a puff of smoke: exhausted, exhausting. You are there, too; and again I avoid you. My palm refuses to meet yours, my lips turn from your hair. If you dissolve, that lost continent may come sinking back. When you dissolve, I fear I might remain.)

Royal City - "I Called But You Were Sleeping" (so he picked up his guitar and sang this song)

"I called" How many others cried? Seriously.

Thanks for the many lovely responses. The winner is Billy, though Brian came very close.