Brass Figment

[Verse 1]
The brass Baldwin key from the house on East Broad
Still on the ring with the Benz fobs, it's a beautiful fraud
Got the bite marks where you'd hold it in your teeth to twist a wire
That was ninety-eight October, air was catching on a fire
I was tracing the grain on the old heart pine floors
You were laughing at the thunder, sealing up the doors
This little piece of metal's the only blueprint that I kept
A load-bearing memory, holding up the debt.

[Chorus]
Still check the lock with the key that don't fit
A little turn of the wrist, just to see if you fixed it
Still check the lock with the key that don't fit
That's the part I ain't gilded, nah, that's the part that I miss.

[Verse 2]
I park a German ghost, the leather's cool against my hand
And wonder if you'd get this new Savannah, this promised land
Of tourists taking pictures of the rot we used to live in
They sell the cast-iron gates for what you made in a year of giving
Your whole damn life to a structure that was built on a foundational lie
My grandmama told me, staring at the sky
She said, "He spirit still dae," in that Gullah hum
But your ghost ain't in the live oaks, it's in the way my hands go numb.

[Chorus]
Still check the lock with the key that don't fit
A little turn of the wrist, just to see if you fixed it
Still check the lock with the key that don't fit
That's the part I ain't gilded, nah, that's the part that I miss.

[Bridge]
It's a keystone for an archway that the water took
It's the muscle memory, it's the one last look.

[Verse 3]
(Double-time)
I'm thinking what if it turned, what if the tumblers all aligned for a minute
Would I find the empty space and all the silence that was in it?
Or the smell of the pluff mud you tracked in on the mat
The stack of yellowed papers where the unpaid notices sat?
The busted cello string I used to trip on in the hall?
The pencil marks on the door frame showing I was getting tall?
The echo of a promise that you made about the spring
It's nothing, it's a figment, it's the weight of the whole damn thing.

[Outro]
(Sound of a key scraping in a lock, failing to turn)
Still checkin'.