Trying But Standing Still

Lyrics

​[INTRO: Distant, ghostly piano echoes. A soft, steady acoustic guitar pluck to establish the 90BPM rhythm. Cold but driving atmosphere.]
​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, raspy C3 chest voice. Intimate, weary breath but keeping with the mid-tempo pulse.]
​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; music stays sparse and distant. No drums. The tempo stays steady at 90BPM.]
​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. Pure but fragile.]
​Trying but standing still, spinning in place,
Drowning in the drought of a hollowed-out space.
​[VERSE 2: Sparse, echoing piano notes. Acoustic guitar continues a rhythmic, soft strum.]
​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. Smooth rasp.]
​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: Low piano resonance. Acoustic guitar sustains the 90BPM pulse with light muting.]
​[VOCAL: High-register wail; pained, ethereal, and desperate.]
​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, distant piano note hitting on the downbeat.]
​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. Close to the mic.]
​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 piano fade. Rhythm gradually dissolves into static.]
​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. Barely audible.]
​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]