A Crown of Splinters

[Verse 1]
The sweat-dark grain on this Lowcountry pine
Blurs under the bare bulb, just a matter of time.
The hum from the transformer on Huger Street tonight
Is the only other witness in this cold workshop light.

[Chorus]
Tomorrow I get the keys, the deed, the name.
A king of all this dust, a winner in the rain.
But this victory feels heavy in my calloused hand,
Like wearing a crown of splinters in a promised land.

[Verse 2]
I see us back in that first August, sharing Cokes in the heat.
Our whole world was the shadow stretching on the concrete.
'You sand against the grain,' you said, 'always have.'
A joke between us then that I couldn't understand.

[Bridge]
My own two hands, they feel like strangers now,
Holding Granddaddy's chisel to the wood somehow.
I won the house we built, but I can't find the door.

[Chorus]
Tomorrow I get the keys, the deed, the name.
A king of all this dust, a winner in the rain.
But this victory feels heavy in my calloused hand,
Like wearing a crown of splinters in a promised land.

[Outro]
The sweat-dark grain on this Lowcountry pine...
It's mine.