Tempest

The longest held note on the record, and the one place the perspective fully turns. Willoughby speaks, and names the fears Ethel could never hear him carry. Young and naive and circling his own darkness, he asks her, plainly, to go easy on him. He can lead her to bed but he cannot make her sleep. He has heard that line before, from someone who left, and now he is the one saying it.

He still dreams of violence, still feels the chain link on his lungs and the acid in his brain, still cannot wait out a death that takes too long. And then the word forever begins, and repeats, and goes on repeating until it wears through. At once a vow and a sentence, the promise the whole album is named for and the weight that promise turns out to carry.