[Verse 1] I know that suitcase by its scuff And the motel clock that won’t slow down Morning coffee gone cold enough To wear the taste of every town I used to lean into the ride Now I count the exits in my sleep The road keeps asking for a smile While something in me starts to weep [Pre-Chorus] And I can feel it in my hands The words don’t come when I command There’s a door I cannot cross For every song the road has lost [Chorus] The lines I never wrote The rhymes I never found They’re hanging in the dust Where my old voice used to sound The lines I never wrote They haunt me night and day I gave my songs to the road And the road took them away [Verse 2] There was a porch in June somewhere A cracked red chair and a cedar tree I had a melody half-born And a whole brave hymn inside of me But every mile asked for a piece Every crowd asked for the same bright tune Now I come home with empty hands And watch the page get old too soon [Pre-Chorus] I hear a line behind my teeth A perfect rhyme I’ll never keep It comes and goes like weather does Then slips away before it’s blood [Chorus] The lines I never wrote The rhymes I never found They’re hanging in the dust Where my old voice used to sound The lines I never wrote They haunt me night and day I gave my songs to the road And the road took them away [Bridge] Maybe there’s a fire left Under all this tired skin Maybe if I let the miles go Some new beginning comes back in But I mourn the unseen pages The ones that turned to smoke and bone All those daughters in the darkness That I was never led to know [Chorus] The lines I never wrote The rhymes I never found They’re hanging in the dust Where my old voice used to sound The lines I never wrote I hear them fade away I gave my songs to the road And the road took them away
