Spent Crystals

Lyrics

Eighteen by twelve.
Perfectly white.
Perfectly dry.

The little blue rocks, they smelled like the future.
Like lavender fields under a digital sky.
And the motor was quiet on the right-hand side,
a single red eye, waiting.
You promised me weeks.
You promised no scooping.
Just a clean scrape, a neat deposit,
hidden away under a plastic flap.
The first day, you were flawless.
A machine for forgetting.

But the clock was already running in the cardboard walls.
The damp was the trigger, the warp was the goal.
Every blue crystal, a tiny hourglass,
turning to pink, turning to waste.
They built the failure right into the fold.
This wasn't made to last, it was made to be sold.
Again. And again.

Day four, the smell changed.
A little ammonia cutting through the fake flowers.
The rake started to drag, just a little.
A new sound, a scraping, a protest.
That red eye blinked.
The blue was retreating, a tide going out.
Leaving shores of dark pink, heavy with what they held.
I saw the bottom start to bow.
Just a millimeter.
But it was enough.

And the clock was running in the cardboard walls.
The damp was the trigger, the warp was the goal.
Every blue crystal, a tiny hourglass,
turning to pink, turning to waste.
They built the failure right into the fold.
This wasn't made to last, it was made to be sold.
Again. And again.

Then the jam.
Eleven P.M. on a Tuesday.
The rake moved an inch... and stopped.
A dull thud.
Not metal on plastic.
Cardboard on cardboard.
Swollen, buckled, ruined by design.
You fought yourself to a standstill.
I tried to empty you, to give you another life.
But the frame was broken. The promise was pulp.

Lifting you out.
You were so heavy.
So full of what you were made to forget.
And the silence in the room
was the sound of the next one
already in a box,
on a truck,
on its way.
Perfectly white.
Perfectly dry.
For now.