[Intro] [Verse 1] Your breath against the seam of my coat It shifts the weight of the collarbone I catalog the way your pupils catch the low lamp Like a faulty circuit finding ground I note the slight tremor in your wrist When you reach for the chipped ceramic It’s a small exchange, a measured thing Like a receipt for something I didn't buy [Pre-Chorus] You leaned past the line I drew And didn't flinch when the plaster fell Just tilted your head to catch the dust Like it was a specific kind of light [Chorus] The Cost of Proximity Is the slow erosion of the frame It’s the way the skin forgets its map It’s the inventory of what I let you see And the ledger never balances [Verse 2] I asked you what you wanted You answered with a single word And the air between us got too thick For the simple shape of it I watched your mouth correct the vowel A tiny, practiced, useless thing I waited for the tremor to pass For the muscle memory to lock [Pre-Chorus] You stayed past the point of courtesy And didn't try to fix the seam Just kept the distance where the air was thin Like a necessary, brittle thing [Chorus] The Cost of Proximity Is the slow erosion of the frame It’s the way the skin forgets its map It’s the inventory of what I let you see And the ledger never balances [Bridge] We map the fault lines of the floor We trace the grain where the paint peeled I watch the way your jaw catches the light And I calculate the tensile strength Of the quiet we’ve agreed to keep It’s a specific, measurable kind of strain [Chorus] The Cost of Proximity Is the slow erosion of the frame It’s the way the skin forgets its map It’s the inventory of what I let you see And the ledger never balances [Outro] What do you do with the space when you finally know?
