Vorpal sword

Lyrics

[Intro]
I don't know what my own name means.
Nobody does.

[Verse 1]
You forged me out of alphabet and breath,
a little joke about a monster in the trees.
I was never meant to be an instrument of death,
I just fit the meter of the breeze.
When your fingers close around my hilt, you feel the gap—
the missing kinetic drag where the iron should be.
I am lighter than the parchment where I'm mapped,
a ghost of a weapon waiting for a decree.

[Chorus]
I am terrified of the quiet at the end of the line.
If I don't sever the neck, do I even shine?
I have to go snicker and I have to go snack,
because if I miss my cue, you'll put me back
into the margin, into the white, into the void.
A made-up adjective, totally unmoored.

[Verse 2]
I don't have a temper, I don't have a tang.
I exist in a flat five percent margin of luck.
When the plastic twenty rolls, I deliver the pang,
but the rest of the time I am comfortably stuck
in the scabbard of a story you read to the young.
I have taken the heads of things that never drew breath.
They fall so cleanly, it burns my tongue.
I just want to know the actual friction of death.

[Chorus]
I am terrified of the quiet at the end of the line.
If I don't sever the neck, do I even shine?
I have to go snicker and I have to go snack,
because if I miss my cue, you'll put me back
into the margin, into the white, into the void.
A made-up adjective, totally unmoored.

[Bridge]
Make me of carbon, make me of rust.
Give me an edge that can chip on a stone.
I am so tired of this whimsical dust,
claiming a kingdom I haven't outgrown.
I want to be heavy. I want to be dropped in the mud.

[Outro]
But I am just a trick of the mouth.
A syllable swung in the dark.
Waiting for the covers to close.
Waiting to see if I still exist when
you stop reading.