Causeway Silence

[Verse 1]
The green Beaufort County sign is bleeding in the rain.
This old Volvo smells like salt marsh and your particular strain
of quiet before the hurricane inside your chest breaks loose.
Three PM on a Tuesday, we've run out of truce.
I watch the fiddler crabs scatter in the pluff mud on the side,
got nowhere left to run to, baby, nowhere left to hide.

[Chorus]
And we cross the water, hold my breath
(Don't say the rest)
The air gets heavy with the death of it.

[Verse 2]
You turn the radio down, the engine's just a hum.
My knuckles are white on the sweetgrass basket from my thumb
just plaiting the edge, a nervous kind of weave.
He says "Bet Nana's got shrimp boil on the stove, you believe?"
And I nod, because the truth is a stone I can't spit out.
This silence is the loudest thing I've ever thought about.

[Chorus]
And we cross the water, hold my breath
(Don't say the rest)
The air gets heavy with the death of it.

[Bridge]
The oak trees all look patient, draped in their Spanish moss.
They've seen a thousand storms break, they understand the cost.
They know this quiet unplaiting, this slow and final thread.

[Outro]
We're almost to the island.
And all the words are dead.