Factor of Safety

[Verse 1]
(acapella) 'It's just tolerance...'
(music in)
...is what you said, right? At the Greenwich site.
The new Elephant & Castle roundabout sleeps uneasy in the sodium light.
And I signed off on your numbers, traded silence for a quiet life.
Now every tremor from the tube line feels the fatigue test of a knife.

[Chorus]
I lowered the factor of safety,
Just a fraction, just for you.
And now this concrete sleeps uneasy,
Knowing what the stress will do.

[Verse 2]
Your hand was warm against the plotter glass, a comforting weight.
I watched you delete the decimal that sealed a ten-year-out fate.
I thought of winter rain, of rebar rust, the slow creep of the state.
But the jerk chicken from the van outside smelled too good to be late.

[Chorus]
I lowered the factor of safety,
Just a fraction, just for you.
And now this concrete sleeps uneasy,
Knowing what the stress will do.

[Bridge]
There's a hairline crack in my coffee mug that maps the future perfectly.
I should call the board tomorrow, confess it all.
Go back to designing misery honestly.

[Chorus]
(with countermelody)
I lowered the factor of safety, (what have I built?)
Just a fraction, just for you. (what will it cost?)
And now this concrete sleeps uneasy, (sleeps uneasy)
Knowing what the stress will do.

[Outro]
The city hums.
The city knows.