[Style: In the manic acoustic style of Ed Sheeran crossed with Slipknot acoustic intensity] [Tempo: 85 bpm, rubato, tense, fingerpicked acoustic guitar only] [Intro] (Close-mic breathing, fingernails tapping the wooden body of the guitar) Keep your sleeves down... Don’t graze the knuckles. Don’t look them in the iris. [Verse 1] [Vocal: Hushed, rapid-fire whisper, paranoid] The girl at the counter handed back copper change Her palm touched my thumb and the market went strange A sound like wet timber snapping under a wheel I tasted the grease on cold hospital steel Her chest gave a shudder, monitor droned Six months from today she will die all alone I dropped all the pennies, scrambled out through the glass Cursed with the wreckage before it can pass [Pre-Chorus] [Instrumentation: Low bowed cello enters, slow heartbeat kick] [Vocal: Creeping, trembling melody] Every coat that brushes past on the train Is a future cold casualty printed on my brain I don’t want to know where the artery breaks I don’t want the burden of the toll that it takes [Chorus] [Tempo: Speeds up to 105 bpm] [Instrumentation: Driving percussive strumming, cello pizzicato] [Vocal: Passionate, desperate, gritty delivery] Don’t reach out to grab me, don’t hold on my wrist I can see how you perish in a coil of thick mist I smell the carbolic, the lime and the shroud The sirens are screaming while you laugh in the crowd One touch is a funeral, one brush is a tomb I’m carrying graves into every bright room! [Verse 2] [Tempo: 115 bpm, brisk rhythmic acoustic pop-strum] [Vocal: Bitter, cynical bite, rapid diction] I put electrical tape over every pane of glass Covered the rearview so no faces could pass The postman stood knocking with a box at my gate I saw his lungs shrivel from a poison he ate A neighbor walked by with a leash on his hound I saw the loose scaffold bring him straight to the ground It’s twenty-four-seven, a cinema reel Of choking on vomit and skidding on steel [Pre-Chorus] [Instrumentation: Double-time floor tom, scraping cello harmonics] [Vocal: Rising pitch, edge of panic] I wear three pairs of gloves in the middle of June To stifle the screams of an afternoon Because skin against skin is a needle that spikes And nobody cares what the casualty likes! [Chorus] [Tempo: 125 bpm] [Instrumentation: Full rhythmic drive, heavy hollow acoustic bass] [Vocal: Strained, soaring rasp] Don’t reach out to grab me, don’t hold on my wrist I can see how you perish in a coil of thick
