Dry-Stack Mind

[Verse 1]
The seven-twenty bus sighs past the allotments,
Old man Hemlock’s out there in the mizzle again.
Placing each slab of Derbyshire grit
Like a word he can’t bring himself to say to a friend.
His knuckles are pale with a fine coat of chalk-dust,
The cold of the stone creeping into his cuff.

[Chorus]
He’s building the quiet, he’s learning the shape
Of a room with one less cup on the side.
He’s building the silence so it doesn’t escape,
A dry-stack mind with nothing to hide.

[Verse 2]
“Tea’s on the flags, love,” she calls from the door,
Her voice is a tremor, a thinning-out seam.
He just nods at the slate, doesn't turn from his war,
Living the end of someone else's dream.
He’s memorising the heft and the grain,
The brutalist comfort of labour and rain.

[Chorus]
He’s building the quiet, he’s learning the shape
Of a room with one less cup on the side.
He’s building the silence so it doesn’t escape,
A dry-stack mind with nothing to hide.

[Bridge]
A fault line runs from the quarry to the kitchen.
He feels the pressure building in the strata of the days.
This is his defiance, his lonely new religion.

[Outro]
The seven-twenty bus sighs past the allotments.
The wall is one stone higher than yesterday.