Standing Still Written By LoNichole

Lyrics

[STYLE: Somber Chamber Folk. Sparse piano, weeping violin. Slow, fragile female vocals C3-A7.]
[INTRO: Delicate, slow piano with a mournful violin swell]
The screen flickers blue in this four-walled cell,
Just two thousand regrets of my own personal hell.
My thumbs tap a message I’ll never hit send,
Chasing a beginning where I broke every end.
VOCAL: Hushed, weary C3 chest voice
I’m carving my ribs just to feed the regret,
A hollow woman who hasn’t learned nothing yet.
I’m a ghost in the hallway, a tremor in light,
Drafting apologies in the dead of the night.
**[CHORUS: Soft piano chords; violin rises slowly]**
And oh, there’s four empty chairs at the table of grace,
Where I search for the lines of a familiar face.
The system is heavy, the gavel is cold,
And I’m just a story that shouldn’t be told.
I’m taking one step with my boots in the dirt,
But two steps back into the heart of the hurt.
VOCAL: Airy, soaring head voice
Trying but standing still, spinning in place,
Drowning in the drought of a hollowed-out space.
VERSE 2: Sparse, echoing piano notes
I hear there’s a little one, curls like the sun,
The daughter of daughters I’ve already undone.
I’m a grandmother through a glass window pane,
Watching for faces through the streaks of the rain.
VOCAL: Fragile, breaking with emotion
They look at me sideways, like a thief in the yard,
With hearts turned to iron and spirits turned hard.
My mama won’t look, she just covers her eyes,
Leaving me nothing but the weight of her sighs.
[BRIDGE: High, thin violin harmonics; piano trill]
[VOCAL: High-register A7 wail; pained and ethereal]
And the silence from my father’s house is louder than screams,
A graveyard of promises, a wreckage of dreams.
I’m wasting to nothing, just skin on the bone,
Reaping the wheat that my sickness has sown.
The door’s always locked, but I’ve got the key,
Yet I keep playing jailer to the worst part of me.
Just a looping sequence, a flickering wire,
Throwing my life on the edge of the fire.
[VERSE 3: All music cuts; total silence except one low piano note]**
There’s a hunger inside that no whiskey can kill,
Just the ghost of a mother, standing perfectly still.
I fought for them, Lord, in the war of my mind,
But I left every piece of my conscience behind.
**[VOCAL: Deep, intimate whisper]**
Four little ghosts in the back of my car,
I never could reach them, no matter how far.
I’m tired of the running, the bars, and the brink,
Tired of the weight that’s helping me sink.
[OUTRO: Slow, descending violin fade]**
So keep the door bolted, I understand why,
Some roots are too bitter to reach for the sky.
I’ll stay in the shadows of the circle I broke,
Dissolving like whispers, burning like smoke.
[VOCAL: Fading breath]**
Yeah, the silence from my father’s house is a song I know well,
Just a mother, a memory, and a digital hell.
Trying but standing still, in the cold and the gray,
Waiting for the ghosts to just carry me away.
END