Down and down we sink
Lyrics
Verse 1
The jawbone of a whale
hung in the rafters of the church.
We knelt in the dust of its dying.
A man carved his name into bone
then forgot what he was carving.
My mother's mother
kept a jar of nails
from the house that burned.
She said metal remembers heat
longer than skin remembers touch.
She was wrong about everything.
Except the nails.
Chorus 1
Down and down we sink.
The floor is not the bottom.
Down and down we sink...
Verse 2
vocals get slightly more intense, deep synth bass starts to thud, acoustic guitar building
vocals get slightly more intense, deep synth bass starts to thud, acoustic guitar building
You taught me how to split wood.
The wedge. The maul. The reading of rings.
Wet year means wide. Fire year means tight.
The tree doesn't choose.
The tree just grows around the barbed wire.
I found a horseshoe
grown into an oak.
The tree was thirty when it swallowed it.
It's still swallowing.
So am I.
Chorus 2
Down and down we sink.
The floor is not the bottom.
Only where the shoveling stops.
Down and down we sink.
The floor is not the bottom.
Only where the shoveling stops.
Verse 3
The doctor said your father's hands
would never hold a fork again.
He was wrong.
He held a fork. He just couldn't feel it.
He held your face.
He couldn't feel that either.
You don't forget the weight.
You forget that the weight is happening.
pause
You forget that you are still inside it...
Bridge
The whale jaw came down in a windstorm.
Nineteen eighty-seven. Cracked a pew clean in half.
Nobody fixed it.
They just moved the hymnals to the other side.
Nobody fixed it.
Chorus 3
Down and down we sink!
The floor is not the bottom!
Only where the shoveling stops!
Down and down we sink!
The floor is not the bottom!
Only where the shoveling—
sudden stop
Outro
The floor is not the bottom.
The floor is not the bottom.
The floor is not the—
The nails are still in the jar.