The Wrong Hour

[Verse 1]
You leave the rusty Stanley clippers on the damp porch rail.
Hear the screen door argue with the sticky Gulf air.
The kitchen light hums a low, yellow lie about being safe.
You pick them up, the cold steel heavy with what isn't there.

[Chorus]
And you don't clip your nails in the wrong hour.
You don't tempt the ghosts your mother knew.
It's a threadbare faith, losing all its power,
But it's the last frayed piece of her inside of you.

[Verse 2]
Your husband's sanding down a cypress cabinet in the shed.
The smell of it cuts right through the evening's low tide brew.
He doesn't know the story of the living and the dead,
Or the promises a daughter keeps for reasons she outgrew.

[Bridge]
She'd say, "The night has teeth, Tamiko-chan," just after nine.
And damn you if you don't see them snapping in the dark.
Damn this house, damn this quiet, damn this stubborn blood of mine.

[Outro]
You put the clippers in the drawer.
One more night, you keep the score.