Salt Hand

[Verse 1]
The cast iron skillet from your grandma’s kitchen
Still smells like Sunday bacon, a tradition we don't mention.
We never learned the easy words, the ones they print on greeting cards,
Just the heavy-gauge mending of each other's broken parts.
Our love is in the what-if, hanging in the humid air,
A sentence that we started but we never finished there.

[Chorus]
Thank you for the quiet,
For the dictionary in your hands.
That one beat of silence (pause)
Where my whole world understands.

[Verse 2]
Last Tuesday, by the marsh walk, tide was coming in real low,
The pluff mud had that smell that only we would ever know.
I almost asked you, 'Are we fraying at the seams again?'
But you just pointed at the egret, said, “Look how still she stands.”
Then you picked a piece of lint off my old denim coat,
And that was the entire answer that you wrote.

[Chorus]
Thank you for the quiet,
For the dictionary in your hands.
That one beat of silence (pause)
Where my whole world understands.

[Bridge]
Our people didn’t have the breath to waste on pretty sounds,
They wove their meaning in the work, the roots deep in the ground.

[Outro]
The quiet. Thank you for the quiet.