[Intro] [Verse] The canyon walls are bleeding red beneath a dying sun I carried every hollow sin and every race I’d run My boots were heavy with the clay of places best ignored I dragged a jagged shadow like a rusted broken sword [Verse] You stood beside the cedar smoke where ancient rivers bend A daughter of the medicine with hands that seek to mend The tribal markings on your skin tell stories of the grace That lingers in the quiet lines upon your weathered face [Chorus] You pulled the iron from my chest and washed away the grime You traded all your silver prayers to buy me back some time Though I was bound for lower ground where heavy spirits dwell Your mercy was the ladder that climbed down into my hell [Verse] I told you of the bitter nights and ghosts I used to keep The way I traded honesty for promises so cheap I showed you every jagged crack and every hollow bone The darkest parts of misery that I had called my own [Verse] You did not turn your eyes away or tremble at the sight You wrapped my frozen wreckage in a blanket made of light With roots and bark and sacred water gathered from the stream You stitched together fragments of a long forgotten dream [Chorus] You pulled the iron from my chest and washed away the grime You traded all your silver prayers to buy me back some time Though I was bound for lower ground where heavy spirits dwell Your mercy was the ladder that climbed down into my hell [Bridge] The elders say the willow knows the way to bend and hold The way to find the hidden warmth inside the winter cold You are the fire in the frost the compass in the gale The only reason left for me to lift a tattered sail [Chorus] You pulled the iron from my chest and washed away the grime You traded all your silver prayers to buy me back some time Though I was bound for lower ground where heavy spirits dwell Your mercy was the ladder that climbed down into my hell [Chorus] You took a man of soot and salt and taught him how to breathe You saw the garden in the soil beneath the tangled weed And as the moon ascends the ridge above the valley floor I know I’m not the ruin that I used to be before [Outro]
