Bracing Bay

[Verse 1]
The scuff on her Clarks from the Metrolink curb is a comma she ignores, doesn't break the verb.
Parents' evening, six o'clock, the November dark outside;
she’s mapping my whole future with a quiet kind of pride.
The chair-leg squeaks a high C on the polished lino floor,
the room smells of chalk dust and the rain against the door.
Ms. Albright’s smiling, got the prospectus on her knee,
sees the M8 postcode, doesn't see the pharmacy degree.
She sees the softened vowels, the slight flat-pack of the 'a',
not the titration figures she can pull from thin air, any day.
Just a periodic table printed on the wall behind her head,
every single element in order, so much left unsaid.

[Chorus - different vocalist, deeper tone]
GO ON, BUILD THE WALL THEN, I’LL BE THE BRACING BAY
STEEL IN THE CONCRETE, WHAT YOU GONNA SAY?
THINK YOU SEE THE BLUEPRINT, YOU ONLY SEE THE FACE
HOLDING UP THE WHOLE DAMN ROOF IN THIS PLACE

[Verse 2]
Ms. Albright leans in close, says, "It's so lovely she has your support."
Like my mother's a nice hobby, a peripheral, quaint kind of sport.
My mother just nods, doesn't show the raw calculation
of the thirty-hour shift, the compound medication.
The torsion on her smile-lines, the hairline stress fatigue;
she's in a different weight class, a completely different league.
She could draft the schematics for the systems in your blood,
could re-route the infrastructure, stem the coming of the flood.
But she just thanks her for her time, folds her hands inside her lap,
another load-bearing column that you've scrubbed right off the map.
And I'm sat here watching, logging every single tic and pause,
a quiet bit of masonry fighting someone else's wars.

[Chorus - different vocalist, deeper tone]
GO ON, BUILD THE WALL THEN, I’LL BE THE BRACING BAY
STEEL IN THE CONCRETE, WHAT YOU GONNA SAY?
THINK YOU SEE THE BLUEPRINT, YOU ONLY SEE THE FACE
HOLDING UP THE WHOLE DAMN ROOF IN THIS PLACE

[Bridge]
It's the scaffolding you don't see, the rebar in the bone,
the quiet piece of masonry that holds it on its own.
It's the physics of a family, the pressure and the strain,
the smile that holds the joists up in the pissing Manchester rain.

[Outro - different vocalist, deeper tone]
The whole damn roof.
Yeah. In this place.