I am already somebody's grandmother in a different universe Empress of a lifetime of unpaid work Dishes stacked high in cabinets Housing families of fire bugs Staring black-eyed at plates commemorating a royal wedding I am the heiress to a mining empire Drilling for love in my friends' chests on television I am a sales person selling impossibilities We are vampire families sucking the life out of each other I just want to dress up as own my worst failures I am a rainy parade of umbrella terms Floats made of driftwood I am a bearer of scar tissue Holding it up like a flesh colored flag We are archives (Heavy with life exhaled and bled) We are weightbearers (We carry your shit to the end of our days) We are archives (Searching the stacks for things left unsaid) And we pay with our lives for what we carry (Most of my friends are already half dead) I am whoever i am In this sitcom i just stumbled into I am every attempt to break the fourth wall To follow the laugh tracks to the source We are the nails and the hammer We are the walls of the house We are the hospital building I am all those unsettling sounds I have been eyeing the ivy Late at night i climb out I have been watching the screens For those lost to be found I am defragmentation I am the whetstone and the knife Learned it was never about Keeping all of us alive We are archives (Heavy with life exhaled and bled) We are weightbearers (We carry your shit to the end of our days) We are archives (Searching the stacks for things left unsaid) And we pay with our lives for what we carry (Most of my friends are already half dead) My friends were held up at gunpoint I was held up by their arms We are who they called disposable In no uncertain terms I am who is taking the long way Who was followed by men I am the keys and the fist For they will follow again I am mold, rot, and rust I have been dying since birth I was buried alive Dug myself out of the earth We are the foot and the shovel We are the graves in the park Nothing can keep us from singing Through the breaking of the heart We are archives We are weightbearers We are archives And we pay with our lives for what we carry