Death Rattle

Love priced honestly up front. It is not painless and it is not free, and it has never come easy. He digs deeper the more she pulls away and has never cared who watches. His death is already planned, a burial beside his mother so he can feel close to her for the first time, and the prayers he carves into her hips make nothing better.

The song races a clock, days numbered, driving only so fast, hiding under the floorboards, a body never built to last. She cries every time she asks whether she is anything to him but a casualty, and whether he even knows what the word means.