Pilot Light

[Verse 1]
Saw your man by the Brockley Sainsbury's, Tuesday, quarter to ten,
Hand in the pocket of a girl who ain't you, and I thought of you then.
First I saw smoke, just a wisp from a half-closed doorframe,
Not my postcode, not my problem, not my pyre, not my flame.
But the air gets thick with the carbon of something unsaid,
The kind of quiet that precedes the call from the newly dead.
I'm the first responder, assessing the scene from the P4 bus,
Got the heat on my cheek, thinking what's the collateral cost, for us.

[Chorus]
So you tell me, what's the protocol here? What's the right thing to do?
Do I break the glass and sound the alarm, knowing it all falls on you?
Or do I walk away slow, let the embers glow, let the structure burn through?
Leave the backdraft to blow out the windows that I once looked through.

[Verse 2]
'Cause containment's a myth once the fire has chosen its path,
You try to douse one room, another just blooms, it's a brutalist math.
I remember he laughed and said, "Some things are better unknown,"
At your housewarming, with his arm round your waist, checking his phone.
Every text is an accelerant, every late night a new floor gone weak,
The back of your neck feels hot like a pilot light, a slow, patient leak.
I could save the photos, the memories, what's in the top drawer,
But I can't save the foundation, it's been rotten since long before.

[Chorus]
So you tell me, what's the protocol here? What's the right thing to do?
Do I break the glass and sound the alarm, knowing it all falls on you?
Or do I walk away slow, let the embers glow, let the structure burn through?
Leave the backdraft to blow out the windows that I once looked through.

[Coda]
(Four seconds of silence)

The concrete is cold.
And the smoke is starting to smell like your house.