Settling Cracks

[Verse 1]
These floorboards learned my father's weight before they learned the son's.
The smell of boiled cabbage in the plaster from '91.
I hold the line where the water stained the drywall brown and deep,
I hold the silence that the mortgage couldn't keep.
Got stress fractures in the brickwork, hairline from the winter freeze,
Felt the rumble of the last shift through the roots of the oak trees.
He sits at the kitchen table now, a ghost in his own chair,
Tapping pads, breathing back the dust that's thick inside my air.

[Chorus]
This foundation's got a memory, every nail and every stud.
This pressure on the roof ain't rain, it's just the rushing of the blood.
Hold the line. Hold the dust.
'Til the rebar turns to rust.

[Verse 2]
The chimney remembers coal smoke, the windows, sticker stars.
Heard her whisper on the phone line, hiding credit card scars.
"'Don't you track that rust inside,' she'd say, a prayer against the damp,"
She polished every doorknob bright beneath the yellow lamp.
Now the hum is from the bridge they're building, south on Jefferson,
A different kind of promise, for a different favorite son.
I watch him trace the grout lines, map the city on my skin,
The only thing between him and the wind trying to get in.

[Chorus]
This foundation's got a memory, every nail and every stud.
This pressure on the roof ain't rain, it's just the rushing of the blood.
Hold the line. Hold the dust.
'Til the rebar turns to rust.

[Outro]
Hold the line... hold the dust...
Hold the...