A Concept in Four Acts

ACT I — Courtship

Track 1: Ohio, You Liar

[Verse 1]
Ohio, I keep coming back to you now, a man returning to old memories —
my original woman, the one who stayed up late, just burning the porch light like it was a form of love.
Ohio, you never held a door for anyone, least of all me, when I’d come home a little more broken every night.
No embrace. Just twilight and a cold breeze.

[Verse 2]
Ohio, you’re just dirt and mile markers, some highway exits shaped like regret,
cities two hours off through cornfields laid out like veins on a heart-shaped map somebody drew by mistake.
But those nights around midnight, when I’m driving your anatomy nine over the limit,
I swear I can hear your heartbeat pumping through the radio band, driving your arteries that never end.

[Chorus]
Ohio, you liar, you let me call this love — the flat horizons, the gravel lots,
the bridge they never finished because who has the money,
the hole-in-the-wall still lit at 3 a.m., keeping watch over nothing.
You’re a heart-shaped region built on land that never asked to be loved.

[Verse 3]I’m aware. I’m aware a man my age shouldn’t be writing love songs to a landlocked state that stays stagnant, that feels nothing back.
But twenty years of trying has to go somewhere, and I’m fresh out of women, so here.
In the rust, in the cold, saying your name out loud in an empty truck, thinking hearing it might make it mean something more
then just silence to the ears.

[Final Chorus]

Ohio, you liar, I’m still here. Not because you’re kind, and not because your roads bent toward me in some cosmic, accommodating way.
But because I ran the numbers, and there’s no other zip code, anywhere else, where I know who I am.

Track 2: Gas Station Gospel

[Verse 1] The Sunoco on 224 — been there since before I knew a name for the soul. I’ve sat in that parking lot at 2 a.m. like it was my church, ringing my hours in , never once closing its doors on me.

[Verse 2] The fluorescent light doesn’t flatter anybody. Everyone looks the same — a morning ghost, already halfway gone. I have loved people there. I have loved myself there.

[Chorus] Call it gospel, call it nothing — a vending machine hum, a bell above a door, gas fumes and strangers asking constantly, “cold enough for you?” like it’s a blessing of the state. I built a whole religion out of 224’s fluorescent light and roads that lead nowhere I haven’t already been.

[Verse 3] Somewhere there’s a version of me that left at nineteen, never looked back, never needed a gas station to feel less alone. I don’t know him. Wouldn’t trust him with anything that matters.

[Bridge] Maybe that’s my confession — I didn’t stay for the place. I stayed and decayed because leaving meant admitting I needed somewhere to be small, just enough to hide and stow away in.

[Final Chorus] Call it gospel, call it nothing. I don’t expect you to understand it. Just telling you where I found God last — under bad lighting, next to the ice machine, and it’s still standing. It’s still here.

Track 3: Everybody Knew My Guitar

[Verse 1] Everybody knew my guitar case before they ever paid attention to my face — that beat-up plywood instrument leaning by so many doors, outlasting me in every room I came into. In rooms I don’t remember walking into, rooms I don’t recall leaving at all.

[Verse 2] There’s a comfort in being expected — someone clearing a stool, the noise of a house party passing for love before I’d spoken a word. I let that feeling define me too long. Longer than it should have.

[Chorus] Everybody knew my guitar, which meant even people who didn’t care about me needed me. I was still screwed up, still hauling that case, still standing in for the version of myself that people ignored — so I sang crappy cover songs, almost left for good.

[Verse 3] Used to think it was devotion. Some nights I still call it that. But there’s a kind of staying that looks like commitment and is really just not drowning, not knowing how to be yourself in the room.

[Bridge] The guitar was never proof. I just needed the weight — so my hands would tremble or shake for a reason, if anyone was ever drunk enough to actually ask how I was doing.

[Final Chorus] Everybody knew my guitar. Nobody asked what was inside besides the instrument. Neither did I. I just played it for others’ amusement, for years, calling it an answer.

ACT II — Domestic Life

Track 4: Routes I Already Know

[Verse 1] Right on Market, left on Perry, past more churches that changed denominations than I’ve had relationships, past the lots where nothing’s been built since I was a kid, past my own reflection in the window of a store whose owner I knew for years.

[Verse 2] I deliver food to houses when boredom and sadness hit. I could find my way with my eyes closed — porch lights left on for strangers who never come to the door anymore, just a text that says leave it, the most honest thing I’ve heard all week.

[Chorus] All these routes I already know before my brain finds anything to say. Forty cents a mile to retrace every street of painful memories I used to walk, so happily, back when I thought I was going somewhere. Nobody told me staying would look this much like dying, this much like motion that doesn’t change or become new. Used to call it work. Some nights I still do. Other days I just say Tuesday.

[Final Chorus] Routes I already know — I could drive them in my sleep, which some nights I swear I do, asleep at the wheel like I have been my whole life, hoping someday, somehow, the routes will change into something new.

Track 5: What I Order Instead

[Verse 1] I still sit at the same bar, same stool if nobody’s beat me to it, order a turkey and a Coke like it’s nothing — as if the bartender doesn’t remember what I used to order before I started counting days instead of drinks.

[Verse 2] He doesn’t say anything. That’s the kindness of small towns — everybody knows, and nobody makes a thing of it. Just refills the glass like I’m still the regular I was years before.

[Chorus] This is what I order instead — ice and syrup and small talk, the noise of a room I used to need to disappear inside of, now just a place I sit to remember I don’t have to disappear anymore. Everyone here is here for that same reason.

[Verse 3] Some nights I still ache for the old version of me, who didn’t care enough to try this hard just to sit still in a crowd. I miss him sometimes. I don’t miss what he cost me.

[Outro] And the jukebox plays the same songs from twenty years ago, I know all the words. Used to think that was sad — a man my age, knowing every word to songs about being young and reckless. Now I think it’s proof I survived him — the version of myself from back then.

Track 6: Known by Everyone, Talked to by No One

[Verse 1] I can’t walk into the Kroger without somebody nodding, saying my name like it’s a fact planted at my feet — I’m a landmark, a museum piece, a wrecked ship anyone can tour on the way past.

[Verse 2] Nobody stops, though. Nobody asks the second question, the one after the routine “how are you,” the one that would require either of us to mean what we say.

[Chorus] Known by everyone, talked to by no one — that’s the trick this town pulled on me. Made me visible enough to never have to ask for help out loud, made me familiar enough that nobody checks if the people suffering are actually okay.

[Verse 3] I used to think I wanted this — to matter to a place, to be a fixture, a feature, something people could set their watch by. Turns out being known and being reached are two different kinds of arithmetic, and I’ve been failing the second one longer than I noticed.

[Bridge] I’ll wave at twenty people on a single drive to the store and go home and not hear a single word spoken to me until the next person waves first. That’s not loneliness, I tell myself. That’s just a quiet day. I’ve gotten good at lying to myself in increments small enough not to count as lying.

[Final Chorus] Known by everyone, talked to by no one. I built a whole life on being recognized instead of being known — and some nights I can’t tell anymore if that’s this place’s fault, or a door I keep choosing to close on myself.

Track 7: The Long Way Home

[Verse 1] I take 224 instead of the highway, even though it’s soaked in more memories than the fast way, past the four stores, past the school, past a house I used to know somebody in — because getting home fast was never really the point.

[Verse 2] I’m not avoiding anything, I tell myself. I just like the drive, the way the light does that thing over the fields at dusk, which is true — the kind of true that’s also covering for something else.

[Chorus] This is the long way home, the scenic route around a question I’m not ready to answer yet: if I love this town, or just fear what’s waiting on me once I finally pull in the driveway and the engine goes quiet and everything I’ve been driving around comes right back.

[Verse 3] Every extra mile is a sentence I’m not finishing. Every back road is a paragraph about a man who just wanted to sit still with himself and never learned how.

[Outro] Somebody asked me once why I don’t just move, start over somewhere my story isn’t already told. I mumbled something about roots, something about home, when the real answer was — I don’t know who shows up in a town that’s never seen me before.

ACT III — The Reckoning

Track 8: Say the Word

[Verse 1] Say the word. Go on, say it out loud, in an empty kitchen where nobody’s around to hear you admit it for the first time — not “I stayed.” Say “I was afraid.” See how different it sounds coming out of your own mouth, instead of dressed up in devotion, taking the same roads and calling it love.

[Verse 2] I’ve called it a hundred coincidental things — loyalty, accident, chore. I never once gave it the real name: a man standing on the edge of every possible life, picking the one where he doesn’t have to find out who he’d fail at being.

[Chorus] Say the word. Not brave. Not chosen. Just scared, in a town that let me call it something prettier for twenty years.

I don’t know if I love Ohio, or if I just never survived anywhere else long enough to find out if I could. That’s not a love song. I can’t tell you what this is. Just a confession with a melody of dread attached.

[Outro] Say the word. I was afraid. That’s it. That’s the whole song. Twenty years, and that’s the whole song.

Track 9: If I Left Tomorrow

[Verse 1] If I left tomorrow, would anyone ask where? Maybe for a week, then the questions would dissolve into barely a whisper — the way people stop checking on something they’ve already decided isn’t coming back.

[Verse 2] The gas station would still be open. The Sunoco doesn’t care who’s buying. The kid on Sycamore would get his food from somewhere else, wait at a different window for a different car, and within a month wouldn’t remember my face any better than I’d remember his.

[Chorus] If I left tomorrow, this town would barely tilt. That’s what scares me more than staying ever did — not that I’d be missed, but that I wouldn’t be missed enough to prove any of this meant something the way I prayed, pretended, panicked it needed to.

[Outro] If I left tomorrow, the sun would still rise over the same fields. Somebody else would take my route, somebody else would sit on my stool, and nobody would notice long enough to miss me back.

Track 10: Nothing Here Is Waiting

[Verse 1] I used to say Ohio was waiting for me, like the girl of my dreams who kept the light on until I stumbled home out of my mind. That was never true. Nothing was ever waiting. The dirt doesn’t remember names. The highways don’t change. Just a vision I built out of hating myself, and it was never true.

[Chorus] Nothing here is waiting. Not for me, not for anybody. I made that my mantra because the alternative was — that I’m just here, plain and unclaimed, same as anyone, same as anywhere. The place was never going to mother my life. I’m the one who has to change.

[Verse 2] Maybe that’s what this whole record’s been about. Not a love song to a hometown state — a eulogy from a wannabe priest, for the idea that somewhere out there was going to want me as badly as I want anyone to love me.

[Outro] Nothing here is waiting. No answer. No sign. Just me, in a kitchen, in a town, in a life, wishing a place would love me because I couldn’t bring myself to love anyone — or myself.

ACT IV — Resigned Commitment

Track 11: I Choose It Anyway

[Verse 1] Nothing here is waiting. I already said that, meant it, still mean it this morning with the coffee going cold and the light doing that thing over the fields again, like it doesn’t know what I’ve been through to still be looking at it.

[Verse 2] Ohio never owed me a single thing. Not devotion, not permission, not even the decency of noticing when I almost left. I know that now. I’m not writing this song to pretend I don’t.

[Chorus] But I choose it anyway — not because it chose me back, not because I earned some sign, just because I’m standing here, in a kitchen, in a town, with the whole truth finally sitting still, and I’m choosing it anyway, eyes open this time. No scripture, no story. Just a man and a place and the plain decision to stay.

[Verse 3] Twenty years I called it love because I needed a bigger word than habit, than fear, than nowhere else to go. Turns out the plain words are heavier, and I can carry them now. I think I can carry them now.

[Bridge] This isn’t the part where everything gets easy. I’ll still take the long way home some nights. I’ll still sit at that bar ordering nothing that could hurt me. But I’ll know why I’m doing it — which is the only thing that’s actually changed.

[Final Chorus] I choose it anyway. Not a love song. Not a eulogy either. Just a man, in Ohio, still here, telling the truth about it for the first time, and staying regardless.

Track 12: Ohio, I Know You Now

[Verse 1] Ohio, I keep saying your name — no more pretending you were ever a lover of mine. Now I know I need to turn my own house lights on in the darkness. Call it faith, call it aging, call it supernatural, or call it nothing. I just turn my own lights on myself.

[Verse 2] Ohio, you’re still just dirt, highway numbers marking your veins, shaped like a sinking heart. But no longer do I fall for the loneliness. No longer do I long for a grave on your anatomy on my night drives.

[Chorus] Ohio, I know you now. Ohio, you’re just a place that happened to be where I was resurrected, living my life out on your endless plains.

I built you up like a religion, a romanticized version of yourself. But you’re just like anyplace else — the hopelessness of people who fill you, who are just trying to find their way. Ohio, or anywhere, we all feel the same.

[Final Chorus] Ohio, I know you now, because I stopped needing to. I’m still here now because I choose to be part of you.

Ohio, I know you now…

Fracture & Form