Country Girl (Dust Don't Ask Questions)

I learned my prayers on a wooden pew

Feet didn’t touch the floor

Mama said God sees everything

Daddy said don’t ask for more

The mirror felt like borrowed glass

I never knew my name

Just wore the words they handed me

Like a hand-me-down shame

The road was long before I walked it

The rules were written in red clay

I loved the South like a mother

Even when she looked away

I’m a country girl with a cracked-open soul

Trying to live what I feel

I don’t hate the land that raised me

I just hate the lies it sealed

I ain’t looking for forgiveness

I ain’t asking to be saved

I just wanna breathe in daylight

Without feeling misnamed

There’s a hush that hangs in August

Like it’s listening close

Every screen door slams like judgment

Every look says “we know”

I learned to talk in half-sentences

To survive the room

Learned silence is a kind of love

If you need to stay immune

I don’t think God made a mistake

I think people learned to be afraid

They built their heaven out of fences

And called it faith

I’m a country girl in borrowed skin

Trying not to disappear

I carry dust in my lungs

And hope I’ll outrun the fear

I ain’t trying to burn it down

I just want a place to stand

Where my name don’t sound like treason

In the mouth of this land

If existence comes before meaning

Then I’m still becoming whole

If freedom’s more than just surviving

Then let me own my soul

I don’t need a clean confession

I don’t need to be erased

I just want my life to feel like mine

And not some test of grace

I’m a country girl, I always was

Even when I hid my face

I learned love from back roads

And pain from saving face

If God is love, then love won’t cage me

Won’t ask me to pretend

I’ll keep walking through the dusk

Till the night learns who I am

The dust don’t ask questions

The wind don’t care who’s right

I’ll lay my head where mercy lives

And call that meaning tonight