[Intro | bass riff, piano and low organ, rim clicks, hushed baritone vocal] First time in thirty-some years, alone in one room — you put your coffee down, say: wait, there's something you should see. [Verse 1 | intimate baritone with quiet intensity, piano and bass in deep pocket, rim clicks, sparse tremolo guitar] You come back in, a box held to your chest. Your fingers, careful, find a photograph — we are so young. A folded letter — mine. I know the hand, the words are new to me. Then, soft at the edges, ink gone pale, a note: "Gone to the beach with the boys — see you tonight. Yours for ever." [Chorus | full band, strings and organ swell, drums open, strong tender full voice] What the paper kept, the skin gives back, what the thread kept warm, the hands set free — all these words could only remind us: it takes a body to remember. [Instrumental | two bars, bass answers the chorus melody, organ low] [Verse 2 | stripped groove returns, piano sparse, rhythmic intimate delivery with nerve, tremolo guitar] My thumb scrolls backwards through the thread — hearts and kisses, words we never wrote before, the messages get shorter as I go, till autumn, out of the blue, from you: "Hi — how are you doing?" Four small words — and everything above them grew. Below: the years go by in seconds, divorces, old friends, new jobs, kids — two lives in bullet points. [Chorus | full band, strings and organ swell, drums open, strong tender full voice] What the paper kept, the skin gives back, what the thread kept warm, the hands set free — all these words could only remind us: it takes a body to remember. [Instrumental Break | four bars, melodic bass lead over piano, organ and strings, no vocal] [Verse 3 | very stripped, slow and sensual, bass and piano low, drums soft and minimal, vocal low and warm with rising nerve, gradual build] We write with hands what ink could never hold — I spell a word across your shoulder blade, your mouth gives back a breath. Slow as a dance no one has led before, each touch a question, each sound a soft reply — no touch too small to read, no sigh too faint to answer — then want turns hunger, skin against skin, your body answers mine in whole sentences now. We have never talked like this. [Bridge | piano, bass and organ only, tender melodic vocal, unhurried, space between lines] The box has moved with you through every year, kept warm beneath the lives we didn't share. Now you read my own words back to me: "I let you look all the way in." [Final Chorus | fullest, full band with strings, male self-echo harmonies stacked, organ and strings rising, powerful lead in front] What the paper kept, the skin gives back, what the thread kept warm, the hands set free — all these words could only remind us: it takes a body to remember — and skin to write what ink began. [Outro | band falls away to bass, piano and organ, single hushed voice, slowing, no harmonies] All the letters, all the pictures, all the thread — not one line saw this coming. Nothing we ever wrote could spell us here… — "see you tonight. Yours for ever." [End]
0/500