She Left Her Head in the Furrow

[Verse 1 – soft, almost whispered]
She was a rider before she was a curse
Knew every ditch, every blacksmith's hearse
Married the harvest, not any man
Carried the scythe with her own two hands

[Chorus] – [voice swells slightly, guitar adds a second fingerpicked line]
They took her head in the barley field
Said a woman's neck don't know how to yield
Now she rides with her spine in her fist
And the moon is a mouth she no longer kisses

[Verse 2] – [harmonium drone enters]
The men who did it wore no masks
Just the usual faces from the usual tasks
They buried the head where the plow won't go
But the body remembered which way to go home

[Chorus] – [repeat, voice cracks on "kisses"]
They took her head in the barley field
Said a woman's neck don't know how to yield
Now she rides with her spine in her fist
And the moon is a mouth she no longer kisses

[Bridge] – [guitar drops to single notes, spoken-sung]
Sometimes at midnight she stops by a well
Lowers nothing but listens for a spell
The water shows nothing—no face, no chin
Just the shape of a woman who can't begin again

[Verse 3] – [floor tom enters, one beat per line]
So don't call her evil. Don't call her cruel.
She's just a girl who lost her only tool—
The one that said stop, the one that said no
The one that could weep when the rye wouldn't grow

[Outro] – [guitar and voice only, fading]
She left her head in the furrow…
Left her head…
Left it there…
[final whispered line]
With the crows.

Gothic Country, Dark Folk, female, Very slow ballad (65 BPM). Fingerpicked, sparse.