Containment Line

[Verse 1]
The Rainier Beer can was sweating on the porch rail
May seventeenth, nineteen-eighty, telling you a tall tale
The dust on my boots was from a different state
But you just traced the map of it, and called it fate.

[Chorus]
You drew a containment line right across the floor
Just a look, a little warning, a smoke under the door
A slow burn I wasn't really asking for.

[Verse 2]
The air smelled of static and ponderosa pine
You said, "Don't you feel that deep thrum in your spine?"
I laughed it off, said it was just the radio low
Didn't know which part of us was getting set to blow.

[Chorus]
You drew a containment line right across the floor
Just a look, a little warning, a smoke under the door
A slow burn I wasn't really asking for.

[Bridge]
All these years later, it's the thing I save first
That quiet moment, just before the burst
When the whole world held its breath under a gray sky.

[Outro]
(3-5 second pause of near-silence)

Just the memory of a backdraft in your eye.