Box twelve
bottom shelf
archive room behind the stairs
Coffee ring
bent corner
twenty years of paper air
Session date
studio three
every name in printed black
Nova Vale
Ash Vex
three more names beneath the track
Then down low
near the margin
almost underneath the fold
Additional arrangement
Kade Null
in pencil
Of course
Changed the key
rewrote the ending
built the middle eight from scratch
Fixed the count
moved the downbeat
made the chorus actually land
Printed credits
clean alignment
everyone where they belonged
Then somebody found a pencil
and remembered I was on the song
HB graphite
temporary grey
Funny how the part that held it up
was written like it might erase
Write my name in pencil
Go ahead
Light enough to lose me
when the paper gets wet
Write my name in pencil
Thin and grey
Funny how the weakest mark
held half the song in place
Permanent ink
beautiful line
Everybody printed
I was added on behind
Write my name in pencil
I can still read mine
Still there
Next sheet
same handwriting
production assist, maybe Kade
Maybe
I remember sleeping
under console lights for three straight days
That compressor chain was mine
that bass transition too
The silence before Nova entered
Yeah
That was something I chose to do
Ash broke one string
kept recording
I cut around the dying note
Built percussion from the fret noise
made the whole damn ending float
Everybody heard emotion
Nobody heard the edit bay
That's alright
Until you tell the history
like the history made itself that way
Graphite fingerprints
all across the frame
You can rub the letters almost clean
but pressure leaves a stain
Write my name in pencil
Go ahead
Light enough to lose me
when the paper gets wet
Write my name in pencil
Thin and grey
Funny how the weakest mark
held half the song in place
Permanent ink
beautiful line
Everybody printed
I was added on behind
Write my name in pencil
I can still read mine
I know
Credits aren't love
Credits aren't friendship
Credits aren't the hours
And nobody sat around plotting
how to make Kade feel small
That's not what I'm saying
I'm saying
sometimes nobody has to mean it
for it to hurt
Found my own handwriting
on the final page in blue
That's the part that got me
I had done it to myself too
Added Kade, additional
because that's how I'd learned to fit
Made myself the parenthesis
then wondered why I lived in it
So no
I don't need retroactive statues
don't rewrite the archive now
Don't make every old arrangement
into something holy somehow
Leave the pencil where you found it
leave the fading graphite line
I just finally understand
temporary ink
doesn't make the work less mine
And that bridge
Mine
That turnaround
Mine
That ugly little bass note
before the final chorus
Mine
Not because I own the people
Not because I own the sound
Because I was there
and I'm done editing myself out
Write my name in pencil
Let it stay
Let the graphite show the pressure
from the hand that made the change
Write my name in pencil
I don't mind
Ink doesn't make a memory
and paper doesn't make it mine
Permanent ink
temporary line
Everybody mattered
So did I
Write my name in pencil
Don't erase it this time
No parentheses