Known Defect

[Verse 1]
The Duquesne Incline lockbox with the key we broke inside.
The smell of hot ozone from the humming cable line.
That whole August, the Monongahela ran too high,
A sluggish, rust-brown current underneath a sweating sky.

[Pre-Chorus]
Just a hairline fracture in the afternoon glare,
A sudden, quiet pressure shift in the unmoving air.

[Chorus]
It wasn't a crash, just a slow design,
A long, quiet shearing on a pre-plotted line.
It wasn't a failure, just the settling of bone,
The day you left a building, not a home.

[Verse 2]
Your mom's old Impala, the dent above the wheel,
Parked out on Saw Mill Run with peeling government steel.
You said, "Some welds just don't hold for good."
And the silence that followed, I finally understood.

[Bridge]
Some foundations settle on unsteady ground,
And you can't brace the structure by the wreckage that you've found.

[Outro]
A known defect.
A known defect.