[Intro 4] [Detuned upright piano, distant bowed-guitar friction, slow sub-bass pulse] [Brushed floor tom enters like an irregular heartbeat] [Verse 1 8] Your coat stayed by the doorway Through the first warm week of May I moved it to the hallway Then I moved it back again Box beneath the staircase Your name in black along the side Every month I say I’ll open it Every month I walk on by [Pre-Chorus 4] At first you filled the whole house Now you fit inside a drawer I don’t know if that is healing I just know it isn’t before [Chorus 8] [Floor tom disappears halfway through] Grief has a half-life It loses weight with time I can carry it through breakfast Without losing the whole day I can laugh and mean it I can sleep the whole night through It keeps becoming smaller It never stops being you [Verse 2 8] Told your story over dinner The one where you got us lost Made it through the ending Without bracing for the drop Everybody laughed like old days And this time I laughed too For an hour you were funny You were more than what we lost [Pre-Chorus 4] On the drive home, I went quiet Like I’d left you at that table Then I heard myself still laughing And let that be what it was [Chorus 8] [Percussion remains absent; half the stereo field falls away] Grief has a half-life It loses weight with time I don’t carry every morning Like the morning that you died I can laugh and mean it Without leaving you behind It keeps becoming smaller But it never leaves my side [Verse 3 8] [Only piano, sub pulse and close vocal] I opened up the cardboard box One Sunday after lunch Gave your books away by handfuls Thought the coat would be too much Then a folded grocery list Slipped out of the inside seam Milk and bread and batteries In your ordinary writing [Bridge 8] [Piano loses notes until only one remains] I read somewhere every sorrow Loses half its weight with time Then half of what is left there Then half of what survives I could keep dividing forever Give the ache a cleaner name [All sound cuts] I still miss you That’s the whole of it today [Final Chorus 12] [Nearly bare lead; sub pulse returns beneath the final six lines] [One bowed-guitar surge rises, then decays] Grief has a half-life Mine learned to make some room For dinners where I laugh now For mornings not about you I can give away your blue coat Keep the list I found inside What gets smaller isn’t loving you Just what losing you weighs So I fold that little paper And let everything else change Grief has a half-life Love doesn’t decay [Outro 4] [One piano key and close room tone] Milk Bread Batteries [Breath] I still miss you [End][End][End]
