Load-Bearing Wall

[Verse 1]
We got the same hairline crack in the same left rib,
some phantom ache from a promise they never lived.
You feel it in your jaw when the cold blows off the lake,
a generational give before the final take.

[Pre-Chorus]
And every night that freight train on the South Shore Line
screams a long, low question that was your father's, and now it's mine.

[Chorus]
We are the load-bearing wall,
standing after the wrecking ball.

[Verse 2]
Heard the foreman whisper back in '92,
"There ain't a future in this steel for boys like you."
Still smell the petcoke plant when the wind turns east,
the ghost of a paycheck, the ghost of a feast.

[Pre-Chorus]
And every night that freight train on the South Shore Line
screams a long, low question that was your father's, and now it's mine.

[Chorus]
We are the load-bearing wall,
standing after the wrecking ball.

[Bridge]
Sometimes you find the good wood, deep inside the rot.
This quiet kind of tired is the only strength we've got.

[Outro]
Still holding. Still holding it all.