Foreword Guilt is not a feeling in this one, it is an instrument. Everything else in a fight is weather — the names, the volume, a hand through a doorframe — and weather passes. What doesn't pass is the moment somebody opens an account in your name, sets the rate themselves, and hands you the statement. You can't clear it, which is the point: an unpayable debt is a permanent hold on a person. The other half is the walking out, which I have watched used as contempt and used as the last thing left, and from outside I still can't always tell which one I'm looking at. Lyrics [Intro] Play it again. The part where I sound like that. [Verse 1] You kept the middle and you cut the ends Fed my own mouth back to me through the wall Same voice, new crime, and the transcript bends Till the man in it isn't me at all You've kept a running total in your head Every bad hour, nothing in between You count it back, you underline in red No column in that book where I come clean [Pre-Chorus] An hour in, the glass hasn't moved An hour in, and neither have I Take the roof off, take the whole house down There's one thing here I will not buy [Chorus] I can take the insult, take the scorn Take the screaming till your throat is torn Take the fist, take the jaw, take the blow But the debt's not mine I don't owe [Verse 2] You split your knuckle on the doorframe once I wrapped it up and never sent a bill I've swallowed down each hour, every month And I am standing in your kitchen still Now there's interest on a thing I never said Compounding in a ledger I can't see You set the rate. You set it in the red. You cut the terms and handed them to me. [Pre-Chorus] Two hours in, the glass hasn't moved Two hours in, and neither have I Take the ceiling down, take the floor out too There's one thing here I will not buy [Chorus] I can take the insult, take the scorn Take the screaming till your throat is torn Take the fist, take the jaw, take the blow But the debt's not mine I don't owe I don't owe I don't owe [Bridge] I have used this door. I know what it does. Coat off the chair, no answer, let them stand there in the hum. I have made a man smaller with the click of a lock. So believe me when I tell you which one this is. [Chorus] I can take the insult, take the scorn Take the screaming till your throat is torn Take the fist, take the jaw, take the blow But the debt's not mine [Outro] Mark it guilty. In absentia. Guilty by default. That one I'll own.
