Say It Out Loud

Say it out loud I kept it in the dark for a year and a half. Say it out loud Somebody out there is waiting on the other half.

Two in the morning and the mortgage is due and I'm staring at a screen with a scheme and a stupid little promise that I made to myself that I'd stop at a hundred, then a thousand, now I'm watching it drop and I'm lying to my brother and my mother and my daughter, telling everybody I'm good like the water ain't already at my neck and the debt is a second job that I'm working every single night in secret. Nobody knew, and that was the whole of the build, a room with no door and a silence I filled, she drew the three of us in crayon and glue, I was in the back and I was out of view.

Say it out loud I kept it in the dark for a year and a half. Say it out loud Somebody out there is waiting on the other half.

They don't call it a loss, they call it a near, they don't call it a hook, they call it free, they don't call it a drug, they call it a game, and they don't call me sick, they just call me by name at two in the morning with a push notification, we miss you? Nah, you miss my participation, a host on the phone with a voice like a friend, that's a salary talking, that's a means to an end, they studied my thumbs and they studied my nights, they built the whole room then they dimmed all the lights, so don't tell me I'm weak 'cause I fell for the bait, they spent a billion dollars engineering my brain.

She asked me why I missed her school show. I said work. She said okay. She already know.

Nine out of ten of us'll never say a word, I was nine, I was every single one you never heard, so I called up my brother at a quarter past dawn with a voice like gravel and everything wrong, and he didn't even flinch, didn't make it a scene, he just said okay and he stayed on the screen, and that's it, that's the miracle, that's the whole plan, somebody held the weight when I opened my hand.

Say it out loud I kept it in the dark for a year and a half. Say it out loud Somebody out there is waiting on the other half. It ain't a movie, I still count the days, still got a debt and I still know the ways that the old road calls when the house gets still, but I answer my phone and I pay what I owe, and last Tuesday I sat in the front row, she drew us again, same crayon, same middle, this time I ain't in the back, I'm in the middle.

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