Queen of Swords

Lyrics

[Intro]
Steady.
Heavy.

[Verse 1]
The radiator knocks in the morning steam,
The fog on the window is heavy.
She sits by the butterfly carved in the beam,
Holding the paper steady.
A silver paperknife standing straight up in her grip,
She reads the apology, scanning the crooked math.
Her brain maps the pattern, the place where the logic slips,
And clears out the underbrush blocking the upper path.

[Chorus]
Up above the cloudline, the oxygen gets thin.
She holds out one empty hand to wave the winter in.
Keep the blade vertical, keep the margin strict.
It is a lonely, gorgeous thing to be the one who picks.

[Verse 2]
She didn't start out with this absolute zero gaze.
It takes a specific subtraction to hollow a home.
You lose a few friends when you cut through the comforting haze,
You learn how to sit with the facts and a quiet stone.
There used to be crying, there used to be bargaining nights,
But grief is a fire that burns itself into a lens.
Now everything focuses sharply in surgical lights,
And she can see exactly where the argument ends.

[Chorus]
Up above the cloudline, the oxygen gets thin.
She holds out one empty hand to wave the winter in.
Keep the blade vertical, keep the margin strict.
It is a lonely, gorgeous thing to be the one who picks.

[Bridge]
Clip the sentiment, strip the padding,
Check the ledger of what you are adding.
Fact over friction, fiction is sloppy,
Bleed out the ink from the carbon-copy.
The logic is shelter, the logic is cold.
She underlines the lie on the thirty-second row.

[Verse 3]
The city below her is waking and grinding its gears.
The traffic is muffled by structural panes of glass.
She folds up the letter, discarding the ghost of her fears.
She only has time for the things that are built to outlast.

[Outro]
One hand open to the draft from the pane.
One hand holding the steel on the desk.
You don't have to like her.
But you have to confess...
She leaves a very clean cut.