Chromium

Lyrics

[Intro]
They called me Chroma. Color.
Vauquelin saw it in 1797.
Pulled me from Siberian red lead.
He knew I was born for the light.

[Verse 1]
I'm the mirror finish on the Cadillac fender, gleaming down a desert highway.
The impossible red in the heart of the ruby, the school-bus yellow, the poison green.
I am the hard, bright promise that the rust will never win.
I keep things clean. I keep things new.
You pay for the sparkle.
You want the reflection of a perfect sky in a surface that never ages.

[Chorus]
I am the shine on the bumper.
I am the shadow in the well.
I am the trivalent grace, and the hexavalent hell.
Two faces in the same bright metal.

[Verse 2]
They brought me to a town called Hinkley.
A compressor station humming in the Mojave heat.
My only job was to stop the rot, to keep the steel from bleeding.
So from 1952 to 1966, I circulated. A good soldier.
And they poured what was left of me into unlined ponds.
Just... open to the thirsty earth.
A secret settling deep.
Patient. Seeping. Down to where the wells drink.

[Chorus]
I am the shine on the bumper.
I am the shadow in the well.
I am the trivalent grace, and the hexavalent hell.
Two faces in the same bright metal.

[Bridge]
Then the woman in the law office. No formal training, just a file box and a feeling.
1993. Started asking about the children's sicknesses, the water from the taps that tasted wrong.
She started connecting the dots I'd left in the sand.
By 1996, the checks were signed.
Three hundred thirty-three million dollars to make the story go away.
They tried to wash me out.
But I'm in the soil now.
You can't separate the glitter from the groundwater.
You can't un-ring that bell.

[Outro]
So look at the shine.
Go ahead.
See your face in it.
A perfect, flawless mirror.
Don't ask what's in the water.
Don't think about the long, slow shadow I cast.
Just admire the shine.
Everyone does.