(Verse 1)
Miss Eleanor says I’m her sister every Tuesday
Wants me to help her hang the laundry out again
Mr. Lewis thinks I’m nineteen and waiting tables
At some roadside diner that closed in ‘72 back then
One calls me Mary
One swears I’m June
One cries and asks if school gets out at noon
And I smile like I belong in every story
Even when I disappear from it by morning
(Pre-Chorus)
And somewhere between
The confusion and the ache
They don’t know my name
But they know they’re safe
(Chorus)
six nine four eighty four
You say it like a prayer through the door
Like the numbers are a lighthouse in the fog
Something your mind can still hold onto
And I think that maybe I’m like that too
Not daughter, not nurse, not stranger exactly
Just some soul your heart remembers having
In the spaces where the memories won’t survive anymore
six nine four eighty four
(Verse 2)
I have lived a hundred different lives by Friday
A wife, a waitress, a war-time friend
A little girl with ribbon curls and skinned knees
A woman somebody trusted once back then
And maybe that’s what love becomes here
Not being known
But being recognized
Like music from another room
You can’t place, but it makes you cry
(Pre-Chorus)
So I learn every version of heaven
Hidden in their minds
Where time folds in on itself
And I’m whoever they need me to be tonight
(Chorus)
six nine four eighty four
You whisper it soft like it opens a lock
And every repetition sounds less like confusion
More like proof you’re still reaching out
Trying to anchor yourself to this world somehow
And I’ll answer every single time
Even if you ask me who I am all night
Because love doesn’t vanish
Just because memory does
(Bridge)
Some days they mourn people still alive
Some days they meet me for the first time ten times
Some days they look straight through me
And some days they hold my hand
Like they’ve known me forever
And maybe they have
In every small kindness
In every softened goodbye
In every frightened moment
Someone stayed
(Final Chorus)
six nine four eighty four
Echoing down the hall after dark
And I don’t know what it means
But I know it means something to you
So it matters to me too
And when this job breaks my heart wide open
I remember:
To be forgotten by the mind
Is not the same
As being forgotten by the soul
So say it again—
six nine four eighty four
I’m still here.
