Parish Lines

[Chorus]
The slow static bleed on the county line.
We're tracing ghosts in the margins tonight.

[Verse 1]
The Buist Academy gym smells like varnish and November rain.
Just the low-grade friction of scuffing shoes on the grain.
I’m decoding the syntax of the woman in front of me,
her shoulders a perfect, perpendicular misery.

[Chorus]
The slow static bleed on the county line.
We're tracing ghosts in the margins tonight.

[Verse 2]
The poll worker’s smile is a flat, corrected grid.
"Just sign at the bottom, son," like the ink wasn't something I did.
And the gradient shifts in the quiet of this room,
a pressure change before the coming of a bloom... or a doom.

[Bridge]
I used to map the resonance of foreign threats.
Now I just measure out the distance in our breaths.

[Chorus]
The slow static bleed on the county line.
We're tracing ghosts in the margins tonight.

[Outro]
On the county line.
Static bleed.