Stone

Lyrics

Cold linoleum under the heel.
The paper crinkles on the metal plate.
She taps the sliding iron with a ballpoint pen,
waiting for the beam to levitate.
She writes a quiet number on her chart.
I am lighter than I was in 1999.
The winter takes a portion of the heart,
but the metal keeps a perfectly straight line.

And they still measure us in rocks.
Like something hauled up from the dirt.
They don't use the language of the laboratory,
they use the heavy language of the earth.
You step up to the judgment and you hold your breath,
waiting for the balance bar to stall.
A man is just a quarry trying to carry himself,
before he gives it to the wall.

I lost two of them since the fever broke.
Where do they go, the pieces left behind?
The hand knows the hollow in the collarbone,
before the clinic scale can change its mind.
It is a brutal kind of honesty we built,
a block of iron painted grey.
To look a proud man directly in the eye,
and tell him he is washing away.

When they still measure us in rocks.
Like something hauled up from the dirt.
They don't use the language of the laboratory,
they use the heavy language of the earth.
You step up to the judgment and you hold your breath,
waiting for the balance bar to stall.
A man is just a quarry trying to carry himself,
before he gives it to the wall.

What is the exact worth of a breathing man?
The soul has no mass that we can see.
But the flesh is held accountable to iron,
and the bone is held to gravity.
We ground the boulders down to keep the ledger true.
It costs a lot of pride to let the metal swing,
and tell you there is slightly less of you.

She slides the heavy weight back to the left.
I put my shoes back on the floor.
Measured in the gravel and the grit.
I ain't as heavy as I was before.
Just a pile of rocks.
Walking out the double doors.