Ghost Signs & Fading Walls: Echoes of What Was

Lyrics

[Intro]
It only shows up after the rain.
Or when the afternoon light hits just right.
On the side of the brick building, Edgewood Avenue.
A ghost, waking up in the sun.

[Verse 1]
I trace the letters with my eyes.
Faded white on faded red.
'Dixie Cola.'
I can almost smell the coffee from the corner store that isn't there.
Almost hear the screen door slap shut.
1950-something.
My grandmother would know the name.
She’d tell me about the man who ran the counter.
About the sound of the wheels on the track.
A sound that isn't here anymore.

[Chorus]
These are the ghosts that don't get a funeral.
The fading names on a sun-bleached wall.
Whispering stories of the people we paved over.
The echoes of what was, before the fall.
Just a ghost sign, nobody sees it at all.

[Verse 2]
Down the block, a window's boarded up.
'Edgewood Dry Cleaners,' the sign says in peeling gold leaf.
I press my face to a crack in the plywood.
I see dust motes dancing in a sliver of light.
And a single barber chair, leather cracked like an old map.
Its chrome is tired.
A jogger in bright shoes flies past, headphones in.
She doesn't see the chair.
She doesn't smell the ghost of cleaning chemicals and aftershave.

[Chorus]
These are the ghosts that don't get a funeral.
The fading names on a sun-bleached wall.
Whispering stories of the people we paved over.
The echoes of what was, before the fall.
Just a ghost sign, and nobody sees it at all.

[Bridge]
That patch of red Georgia clay by the big parking lot?
That was three houses.
Three front porches where people talked about the weather.
This was a town, once.
Nineteen-oh-nine, it got swallowed whole.
Two-thousand-and-five, it got a different kind of ending.
They dug up the bones for a big-box store.
And left the ghosts to wander the aisles.

[Outro]
The sun is moving.
The letters are sinking back into the brick.
'Dixie Cola' is going back to sleep.
Fading out.
Fading.