[Verse] Bleach taste from the back room sink wintergreen and Xerox heat I learned to grin at autopsies with paper cuts across my teeth Everybody had a ruler every ruler bent my name I kept chewing through the wiring just to see the ceiling shake [Verse] Dog comes crawling when the shouting starts tail tucked like a severed fuse Wrong soul begging for the thunder like he’s got something left to lose Maybe comfort looks disgusting when you learn it through alarms Maybe love is just your nerves getting tangled in the harm [Chorus] I’m not your slow kid I’m not your strange I’m not the cracked mirror you keep around for shape You don’t know me from the haircut or the static in my jaw You saw smoke and called it failure while I held up half the wall [Verse] Middle kings in swivel chairs passing out their little scars “Good thing you escaped in time” like they almost crushed a star Later came the ghost revision “You were awful back at first” Funny how the story fattens when the witness leaves the earth [Bridge] I learned patterns from the panic I learned numbers from the bruise Fifty percent survival instinct fifty percent nothing to lose I built myself against a shadow now the shadow’s in my stance I can’t tell if I escaped it or just taught myself the dance [Outro] Dog still wakes before the sirens pacing circles through the dark Every room becomes a classroom every stranger leaves a mark And the flood keeps all the fingerprints underneath the painted walls You can scrape them with your fingernails but they never really fall
