Contact Sheet

[Verse 1]
Keisha, found that disposable Kodak from Platt Fields park,
the one with the light-leak bleeding gold across the dark.
Got that double-exposure where my face slides off the bone,
just a ghost in a tracksuit on a busted paving stone.
I can still feel the heat rising, ozone off the netball court,
the future was a sharp intake, a different kind of sport.
Now the whole negative's grainy, the focus is a guess,
just a catalogue of silhouettes under architectural stress.

[Chorus]
It's a contact sheet of a life I half-developed,
a one-hour photo of a promise, still enveloped.
Every frame is a ghost note, every red eye is a clue,
from the girl in that picture to the woman talking to you.

[Verse 2]
Remember the awning by the takeaway, hiding from the rain?
The smell of wet tarmac and fried batter, blocking out the pain?
'You're overexposing it,' you said, laughing through the heat,
like we had a million rolls of film left, dancing on that street.
Now I look for you in the margins, past the sprocket holes and blur,
the faces cropped out later, the people we no longer were.
This is the developer fluid, the chemical and slow,
the alkali burn that teaches you which parts you have to let go.

[Bridge]
Hold that frame. The static hiss. The moment before the flash.
Look at us. Just kids braced for a beautiful car crash.

[Chorus]
It's a contact sheet of a life I half-developed,
a one-hour photo of a promise, still enveloped.
Every frame is a ghost note, every red eye is a clue,
from the girl in that picture to the woman talking to you.

[Outro]
The flash still burns a blue spot right behind my eyes.
Yeah, I'm keeping the negative. Surprise.