Black Dust in My Teeth

[Verse 1]
Alarm hits four
Coffee’s burnt and thin
Boots by the door
Black river on my skin
Lunch pail cold
Name tag frayed and bent
Praying hard the roof
Holds up one more shift
[Chorus]
I got black dust in my teeth
Black dust in my lungs
Every breath I steal
From a broke-down sun
If this hill decides
To lay me underneath
Carve “he fed the dark”
Where my bones find peace
I got black dust in my teeth
[Verse 2]
Tracks run down
Through the mountain’s throat
Rust-red creek
Where the fish don’t float
Sirens once
For the men we lost
Their hats still hang
Like unpaid costs
[Chorus]
I got black dust in my teeth
Black dust in my lungs
Every breath I steal
From a broke-down sun
If this hill decides
To lay me underneath
Carve “he fed the dark”
Where my bones find peace
I got black dust in my teeth
[Bridge]
Daddy coughed up midnight
In a county bed
Said “boy, this rock
Already wrote us dead”
But the landlord’s waiting
And the baby cries
So I clock back in
Where the daylight dies (oh Lord)
[Chorus]
I got black dust in my teeth
Black dust in my lungs
Every breath I steal
From a broke-down sun
If this hill decides
To lay me underneath
Carve “he fed the dark”
Where my bones find peace
I got black dust in my teeth
I got black dust in my teeth

country, Dry, haunted dark-country ballad. Male vocals, close-mic’d and weary. Fingerpicked acoustic in dropped tuning, brushed kick on the 1 and 3, low tremolo electric guitar swells like distant thunder. Harmonica moans at section ends, faint baritone backing on the choruses. Mix stays intimate, then swells slightly in the bridge with a rough edge in the vocal and a pushed room reverb before collapsing back to a stark outro.