[Intro - Fence Impact] Testimony. Take it slow. [Verse 1 - Rusted Pulse] Before the belly I had a stride. Before the dust, I stood. Me and my sister crossed the garden while the crossing still was good. She wore her eight like silver shears. I wore four and called them mine. No web hung in the air between us. No quarrel in the line. Then a fruit hung in the middle acre where the boughs ran gold and sweet. Did I offer? Did I warn them back? Three mice alone can speak. One bite--and the orchard showed its rigging, root to branch and branch to air. She called it home. She called it harvest. I called that rigging a snare. Nothing changed inside the garden. We had only learned it there. [Hook - Distant Gospel] Her story's true. My story's true. That's what the fruit does, son. Every fact agreed, every meaning at war, since the seeing first begun. She says the legs were confiscated. I say the legs were spent. Count the eight she got to keep, child-- then ask yourself where mine went. (Ask the mice.) [Verse 2 - Corroded Pressure] They took my lids when they took my legs. I haven't slept since then. Call that a curse if her book's your book. I call it sight without an end. They left my blood too cold for home; I borrow fire from one far sun. They named my forked tongue a sin because it tastes what smooth tongues miss. Every truth I carried out of Eden cost the skin it traveled in. I don't own one skin I ever wore. I shed the proof and grin. Molt by molt, my testimony, hung on fence wire in the sun. Read it slow. It reads you too. Everything I ever told you, I told belly-down and true. [Bridge - Chain Drag] You've heard of three blind mice. (See how they run.) Child, blindness was the lie. (See how they run.) They saw each hand that moved the cords, then ran to stay alive. Her book says I hunt their testimony. Mine says I begged them to speak. But I am shaped like what they flee from--every plea comes belly-low. The only three who saw it whole won't tell what they know. [Final Hook - Machine Unstable] Her story's true. My story's true. That's what the fruit does, friend. Every Eden has a landlord. Every knowing has a rent. She says my legs were confiscated. I say I paid the fee. And the knowing and the cage are the same door, child-- I'm the one who hung it. Believe me or don't. But you see. [Outro - Abrupt Cut] Cold blood. Open eyes. Low to the ground. If three small shadows pass you running, tell them all I ever wanted was somebody to say what they saw. (See how they--)
