Digital Ash

[Verse 1]
The dust on this screen makes a halo 'round her name,
Maria Acuña, 2:13 in the rain.
This motel phone's got one bar of light,
It's enough to do the job tonight.
Just a seam of bad turquoise in a wall of gray granite,
Gotta chip it all out 'til you forget you ever had it.

[Chorus]
One little icon, a can for the trash,
Turns a whole damn year into digital ash.
My thumb on the glass, so clean and so cold,
Makes a story un-written, a ghost untold.

[Verse 2]
I remember her laughin' by the Rio Grande,
The sound of the water, the scorpion in the sand.
She said my hands were calloused, said they felt like the land.
I remember the gravel when her Chevy van
Spun out of the lot, left a scar on the dirt,
The way a memory stays right where it's hurt.

[Spoken-Word Interlude]
(A staticky, distant female voice, as if from an old voicemail)
"Sal, please… just leave the keys. They're just keys. Don't come back this time. *Por favor… no me llames.*"

[Bridge]
Memory's a liar, a wash of bad light,
Just gotta wipe the slate, make the whole screen bright.
It's just some numbers, *eso es todo*, I guess.
A quiet kinda violence in a single press.

[Chorus]
One little icon, a can for the trash,
Turns a whole damn year into digital ash.
My thumb on the glass, so clean and so cold,
Makes a story un-written, a ghost untold.

[Outro]
The screen asks 'You Sure?' in letters of red.
I press it like I'm puttin' a pillow on its head.