Datum Line

[Verse 1]
The keys to the gaff have a nick in the third tooth
from a lock on a door that was knocked through in your youth.
You still hold them the same, thumb pressed on the cold brass,
a phantom limb memory for a threshold you don't pass.
You trace the ghost plan with your own hand on the new wall,
feel the load-bearing logic before the structure falls.
It's a blueprint inheritance, a sub-dermal map,
the hairline fracture waiting in the quiet of the trap.

[Chorus]
It's the datum line, a chalk mark on the brick they left for you.
The zero-point reference for everything you do.
You measure the deviation, the torsion and the strain,
back to the datum line again in the Moss Side rain.

[Verse 2]
Remember the Tuesday bin rota, the angle of the chairs?
The superstitions coded in the steepness of the stairs?
She'd say, "Don't walk past the old gasworks after dark,"
like a mechanical failure's still left there in park.
You check your own pulse, a systems-diagnostic tic,
for the faulty wiring passed down, the generational trick.
It's the cold spot on the landing where a wall used to be,
a structural haunting, for only you to see.

[Instrumental Break]

[Chorus]
It's the datum line, a chalk mark on the brick they left for you.
The zero-point reference for everything you do.
You measure the deviation, the torsion and the strain,
back to the datum line again in the Moss Side rain.

[Outro]
Just the low hum of the streetlights...
The baseline...