A Lapsed Cadence

[Verse 1]
The second-hand iPhone has a crack like a riverbed.
Tuesday, just past midnight, every message left unread.
I scroll back to October, to a joke about the Stake President's tie,
And the weak light paints a ghost of our old firmament up on the kitchen wall.

[Chorus]
Oh, we're a root system starved of rain,
A photograph left in the sun.

[Verse 2]
I remember Levi's basement, the smell of damp cement and Dungeons & Dragons dice,
Mapping out a future we swore we'd build on consecrated ground.
"'It's just different now,' you typed, then deleted it twice."
Just a string of pixel-dots where a sapling might have been found.

[Chorus]
Oh, we were a root system in the spring,
A testament someone had begun.

[Bridge]
They say a graft can fail, the host rejects the foreign stem.
Did I poison the soil just by wanting something else besides them?

[Chorus]
Oh, we'll be a root system turned to dust,
A story told when the work is done.
A lapsed cadence, a holy rust.

[Outro]
The screen goes dark.
Another dormant seed in Burlington.