Croydon Shale

[Verse 1]
You're stood outside Lunar House, Tuesday nine on the dot,
The concrete is sweating, the pavement is basalt.
Each face in the queue is a new sedimentary line,
Compressed by the wait, losing all track of the time.
The damp off their coats smells like iron and deep earth,
They're checking their papers, questioning what their life's worth.
You watch your own breath cloud the glass, a temporary ghost,
A footnote in strata on the unforgiving coast.

[Chorus]
They call it pressure, makes the strata bend.
But you're the fault line, love, you're the bitter end.
They call it pressure, squeezing you to stone.
You're the fracture in the bedrock, standing all alone.

[Verse 2]
Your history's compacted, a vein of some strange ore,
The Peckham years, the night bus, the landlord at the door.
Each memory a fossil they'll dig up and hold to light,
Decide if it's precious, decide if it's right.
"Form in the tray," he says, bored. "Don't make me say it twice."
His voice is erosion, grinding hope to feldspar and ice.
You see the hairline cracks spread across his tired face too,
Another mineral subject to the geological view.

[Bridge]
The silence in here is a slow tectonic plate shift.
A beautiful ending, the world's quiet final gift.
The strip-light hum is the sound of a mountain worn down.

[Outro]
Just dust settling on dust.
In this concrete crown.