Fine Tolerance

[Chorus]
This third drawer down, the one that always sticks—
That's our fine tolerance, the beautiful friction of it.
All the years of load compressed to this.
The static hum of what we didn't fix.

[Verse 1]
A key for a bike we sold back in '18,
two dead AA's and a zine from Dalston Green.
We lived inside the margins, the acceptable wear,
a low-grade shudder shaking the thin air.

[Verse 2]
Your Nando's loyalty card, expired, behind
a single bearing from the chair my dad rewired.
I hear the wooden groan of it. You said, "Just leave it be."
The steady application of a force you couldn't see.

[Bridge]
And all that tensile strength we swore we had
was just the steady, unseen press of what goes bad.

[Outro]
I still keep the torque just right, you know.
I still—