SURGICAL STEEL

[Verse 1]
The Formica's got the burn mark from your '98 Camel Light,
I watch your brother count out twenties under the bare bulb every night.
Same wood grain you did your trig on is his new and sole domain,
he's performing triage on the bills to stop the hemorrhaging rain.
I feel the tremor in his fingers as he traces that old line,
a hairline fracture in the surface, a scar that says he's fine.
This ain't the kinda long division they were teaching in grade nine,
it's a whole new anesthetic just to get the pulse to find a sign.

[Chorus]
This kitchen is the theater, I'm the table, surgical steel.
I hold the clean incision, never ask you how you feel.
I'm the tray for every instrument they use to make the deal,
the surface where the blood dries when they amputate what's real.

[Verse 2]
I remember spilled orange juice, his mother's frantic, hurried speech,
now it's just a single drop of red that soap and water couldn't reach.
It came in on his knuckle bone at 3:13 AM last week,
a new suture in the silence that this family's scared to speak.
He whispered to your picture, "Antoine, it's just a temporary fix,"
while he sterilized the problem with a stack of counterfeit bricks.
I wear the water rings and knife scars like a patient chart of tricks,
bearing weight that ain't been measured by no structural politics.

[Chorus]
This kitchen is the theater, I'm the table, surgical steel.
I hold the clean incision, never ask you how you feel.
I'm the tray for every instrument they use to make the deal,
the surface where the blood dries when they amputate what's real.

[Outro]
The prognosis is... uncertain.