Sintered Prayer

[Verse 1]
The Kenwood kettle's clicking off at Tuesday, 4 AM again,
See your face in my reflection, traced on the windowpane.
The scaffold of my jaw is set, a blueprint I ain't never drawn,
Same hard line you had in that photo from '81, on a Peckham Rye lawn.
It's the muscle-memory masonry, this architecture in my cheek,
A silent testament to pressure, seven days of every week.
This inheritance ain't silver, it's a certain way of holding stress,
A concrete vigilance that never grants the body rest.

[Verse 2]
I smell the Dettol on Mum's uniform, she's home from the night shift,
Drops her keys in the ceramic bowl, a planet come adrift.
She got it from you too, that involuntary, grinding clench,
A generational retaining wall, a deep, defensive trench.
You used to say, "'Hold your tongue tight or the city pulls it out,'"
A South London proverb for the things we don't speak about.
It's the egún we carry quiet, the interest on a debt that's in the bone,
A vibration in the mandible when we are left alone.

[Chorus]
Grandmother, hear this transmission from the twenty-second floor,
Take this ball-bearing from my jaw, I can't hold it anymore.

[Chorus]
Grandmother, hear this transmission from the twenty-second floor,
Take this ball-bearing from my jaw, I can't hold it anymore.

[Outro]
The kettle's gone cold now.
Still grinding.