FORMICA ALTAR

[Verse 1]
Tuesday night at The Sump, past two, the tourists are gone.
He's got fryer burns patterned from his wrist to his arm.
She's got ink on her knuckles spelling out a dead friend's name.
Two ghost moths in the bug-zapper glow, burning the same.
They don't talk 'bout the rent check, the shifts, or the ache in their feet.
Just watch the condensation draw a map on the bar in the heat.
He traces the wet ring her glass left on the wood like a scar,
and says, "You're the only quiet thing I've heard in a car."

[Chorus]
THIS THE CHURCH OF THE LAST CALL SHOUT
THIS THE GOSPEL FROM A DIRTY MOUTH
SWEAT AND WHISKEY FOR THE HOLY WATER
ON THE FORMICA ALTAR

[Verse 2]
She knows the gray of federal buildings that eats up the sky,
and the jawsin' from suits who don't bother to look in your eye.
He knows the smell of the Metro exhaust when you're waiting for dawn,
and the weight of the city pressing down 'til your reasons are gone.
They're a nest of wasps huddled up in the capital rot,
a furious prayer for the one single thing that they've got.
He brushes her hand and the touch feels like jumping a fence.
In a town full of termites, this is the only thing that makes sense.

[Chorus]
THIS THE CHURCH OF THE LAST CALL SHOUT
THIS THE GOSPEL FROM A DIRTY MOUTH
SWEAT AND WHISKEY FOR THE HOLY WATER
ON THE FORMICA ALTAR

[Verse 3]
(double-time)
They ain't seein' the roaches that skitter behind the ice machine,
they ain't hearin' the ten-minute warning, they wiping it clean,
every memory, every bad tip, every manager screaming a name,
every humid-ass summer that sticks to your skin like a shame.
This ain't love like a movie, it's two people bracing for impact,
it's a battlefield truce in a body that's already cracked,
it's the one damn light in the bar that ain't flickering out,
it's the kingdom they're building from nothing inside of this drought.

[Outro]
Bar rag swipe. Smell of the bleach.
The silence they left is a kind of speech.