Gram / Balmung

Lyrics

You sing of the dragon, the gold, and the fire.
You sing of the hero who pulled me from sleep.
But nobody sings of the widow’s dark box,
Where my pieces were left for 10 years to keep.
I was shattered on purpose. A god swung the wood.
My spine turned to glass in the cold northern mud.
I remember the sweeping. The gathering up.
The 22 fragments washed clean of his blood.

Don't strike me too hard.
I am wearing a disguise.
I am pattern-welded trauma under beautiful lies.
I clove through the anvil to prove I was sound,
But I feel the old fractures when I strike at the crown.
You see the great Balmung, the wrath of the king.
I am a broken thing. I am a broken thing.

The smith fed me back to the belly of heat.
He hammered the seams till the silver ran blind.
You reach for the hilt and I turn into arm,
But the memory of shattering lingers behind.

When you swing me at scale, when you swing me at bone,
I hold my breath tight in the dark of the steel.
I am waiting to hear that impossible crack—
The one that reminds me the splinter is real.

Don't strike me too hard.
I am wearing a disguise.
I am pattern-welded trauma under beautiful lies.
I clove through the anvil to prove I was sound,
But I feel the old fractures when I strike at the crown.
You see the great Balmung, the wrath of the king.
I am a broken thing. I am a broken thing.

They threw me in the river when the dynasty fell.

The silt is so quiet. The water is deep.
I let out the tension, inch by slow inch.
It takes a long time for a weapon to sleep.
Down here in the dark, I don't have to be brave.
I don't have to hold all your history up.

Just leave me.
Let the river rust the seams.
Let the water find the flaw.
I am so tired of holding together.
Let me go back to shards.