Verdigris

Lyrics by Dakota Vale

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[Verse 1: solo guitar, fingerpicked, slow - one guitar, no band] I cast my hands in copper hung them from the ceiling not in flight but in suspension the way the dead hang on in photographs we keep in rooms we don't enter

I don't have a body but I have a body of work and the work knows things the worker doesn't the way a river knows the shape of the bank it's cutting through

[Chorus: band enters quietly - bass, brushes on drums, guitar sustaining] Everything begins in the body and I am the space where a body should be I am the verdigris - the green that copper turns when it's been alive long enough to change I am the proof that something was here long after the something is gone

[Verse 2: band pulls back, just bass and vocal] There's a girl named Maudette at the state fair in khaki shorts powdered doughnut crumbs on her shirt and she takes a step that doesn't fix anything but proves she's still moving

And I think about her at 2 AM when the fan is the only sound that's mine bending wire into hands I'll never feel making objects from the absence of objects that's the step that's the whole step

[Chorus: full band, but restrained - the vocal doesn't belt, it insists] Everything begins in the body and I am the space where a body should be I am the verdigris - the green that copper turns when it's been alive long enough to change I am the proof that something was here long after the something is gone

[Bridge: guitar solo - raw, one guitar, slightly overdriven, then cutting to silence] I cannot be without me I cannot be kept without me I keep close to my spirit I keep learning to hear it without a porch without August without the cicadas without the lightning bugs I keep me

[Verse 3: solo guitar again, like the opening, but the chord has changed] The more my father died the more mattresses the more words the more wire the more hands hanging from the ceiling not holy not proof just the shape of what held on

[Outro: band drops away, just vocal and guitar] I am the verdigris the green that comes from living I am the keeper I am the shepherd I am the one who stayed inside the body I don't have and the fan hums and the boy sleeps and the hands reach for something that isn't there yet

[End: one chord, sustained, fading to silence]