4th Day Prayer (dim star remix)

I was the queen of Westmount Park
It was all mine after dark
Gold willow tree was my throne
'Til I, 'til I went home
Father used me like a wife
Mother turned the blindest eye
Stole my body's spirit, pride
He did, he did, each night

It's one for the hate that looms
Two for the poison and the roots
Three for the children begging
Four for the divers standing in the sun

These are the best years of your life
If I'd believed it, I'd have died
Something told me that they'd lie
Oh I, oh I survived
Left home, I was just a child
Slept in the graveyard under the mile
When the sun came up and found my skin
I rose, I rose again

And the graveyard was the safest place
Those prayers earnest and raw that were soft on their lips
As they took their last breaths
What more honest space to surrender to God?
Disillusioned hopes and dreams and secret whisperings
Ancestors coverings, what a place to hide
Home was my tormentor, death was my protector
Stacking heaps of cardboard boxes like Lego pieces to make shelter
Heaven blessed us, hell kept us
Home hurt us so bad, made playgrounds of graveyard sectors
Fermented flesh fertilizing honeysuckle nectar
It's the beauty in the heinous, the pain that made us famous
Cedar fingers and juniper berries
The shadows they made in the moonlight used to scare me
I prayed that God would prepare me
Fear, my oldest friend
Many nights it rocked me to sleep until my cold blood ran thin
Leaked itself out of the veins of my pen
Running wild and free like laughing children
Into the light of day where we'd learn to sing a sweet song again

Slipstreams and fever dreams
Do you see what I can't see?
Tell me, tell me, tell me, I want to understand
From the coast of Africa
To the hills of Grenada
To the cold of Montreal
That whip, that whip still bows

It's one for the hate that looms
Two for the poison and the roots
Three for the children begging
Four for the divers standing in the sun