The Beautiful Thing That Hurts

Lyrics

Found you in the Atlas.
On a shelf of cold limestone.
A little book of paper, and inside...
a ghost.

Your owner's name was Annie.
They called her Allergic Annie, a quiet joke in the fields of Pampore.
Every dawn, before the sun, her hands would find the crocus.
150,000 times for a single kilo.
Her eyes would water, her breath would catch.
A fine red dust that paid her bills and made her sick.

Oh, the beautiful thing that hurts.
The bloom you lean into, even as you sneeze.
Is this one, this flattened rose, the same?
A memory that makes your eyes water just the same?
Do we keep choosing what wounds us, just because it was lovely?

This one wasn't for money.
This one was for a night.
Pinned to a dress, its scent wasn't metallic hay, it was just... rose.
One night of breathing someone else in.
No pollen in the air.
Just a nervous hand on her back.
Now you smell of paper and time, pressed flat by the weight of years.

The beautiful thing that hurts.
The bloom you lean into, even as you sneeze.
Is this one, this forgotten rose, the same?
A memory that makes your eyes water just the same?
Do we keep choosing what wounds us, just because it was lovely?

She carried you all the way from Kashmir.
Across the water, to this dry, thin air.
Did she think the mountain could hold you for her?
Keep the pain of the saffron separate from the ache of this one night?
But the body knows, Annie. The body holds it all.
The itch, the memory, the scent, the cost.

A pressed corsage on a high, cold rock.
Proof of one good night.
Or proof of the price.
What hurts more?
The flower you pick every day...
or the one you only got to pick once?