Carolina

I started out as a light in my father's eyes at a Texaco

Mama was working overnights on Sam Wilson Road

She was a madkap, teenage runaway

A year past graduation

She was new in town and he was burning down

The place with infatuation

She fired red hot buckshot distress calls across the parking lot

A rebel reeling from the feeling of rooting around for a little repose

They chased sunrise with moonshine

After tussling and muttering secrets all night

Started out as a light in Carolina

I started out as a light in Carolina

Well, I started out as a light in my mother's eyes many years ago

In the numbing fires of live wires loose in foster homes

From my grandpa's fist to my mothers lip

There's an ancestral impression

An American inheritance of trauma and depression

She fired red hot buckshot distress calls across the parking lot

A rebel reeling from the feeling of rooting around for a little repose

They chased sunrise with moonshine

After tussling and muttering secrets all night

I started out as a light in Carolina

I started out as a light in Carolina

From the birth canal to the whistle of emergency sirens

You've got a lot of skins to wear

As you try to figure out who you are

And it don't matter what people say

Don't expect them to understand

Ain't nobody no one else's mistake

Life is not always the things you plan

Some of us have childhoods that aren't poems on sight

But, darlin', you're doing alright