A Phantom Draft

[Verse 1]
The county plat book from nineteen-oh-nine is all we have to go by,
Just phantom squares on faded blue, laid out beneath a different sky.
Our fence posts follow lines of thought that died out with the steam,
And every threshold that we cross was part of someone else's dream.

[Pre-Chorus]
The floorboards settle north-to-south, they don't know any other way.

[Chorus]
We speak in borrowed rooms,
We walk on ghost foundations.
Our joists were set to a rhythm we have lost through the generations.

[Verse 2]
The cellar cool, the smell of chert and damp that never leaves the air,
You find the old high-water mark on a stud that isn't there.
"They built this for a different rain," Sam said last week in June,
And kicked a loose stone from a wall beneath the afternoon.

[Pre-Chorus]
The load-bearing walls remember things we've tried so hard to lose.

[Chorus]
We speak in borrowed rooms,
We walk on ghost foundations.
Our joists were set to a rhythm we have lost through the generations.

[Bridge]
And the well we dug last Tuesday hit the limestone of their floor,
A footing for a life that doesn't live here anymore.

[Outro]
Just borrowed rooms,
And a phantom draft that's blowing through the door.