Vessel Wall

[Verse 1]
The big Rothko at the Albright breathes a terminal red
on a Tuesday so quiet you can hear the dust get shed.
Your reflection in the polished concrete is translucent and thin,
like a diagram of all the places the damage gets in.

[Chorus]
If you replace every plank in the hull of the wreck,
does the ocean forget all the bodies on deck?
'Cause I built this new body from cartilage and prayer,
but I still feel the old wiring sparking in there.

[Verse 2]
Remember that night by the Cargill silos, the lake-effect ice?
You said, "Your love is a surgeon who never cuts twice
in the same place." And I laughed, with a mouth full of rust,
confusing the symptom for some kind of sacred trust.

[Chorus]
If you replace every plank in the hull of the wreck,
does the ocean forget all the bodies on deck?
'Cause I built this new body from cartilage and prayer,
but I still feel the old wiring sparking in there.

[Bridge]
And I won't say I miss him, that boy at the bar—
(vocal goes completely dry, intimate, no reverb)
but his thirst is a phantom limb, and I know where the scars are.

[Outro]
(A quiet, reharmonized melodic fragment from the chorus)
Does the ocean forget?
Does the ocean forget?