1. CROW - Lyrics

(Scroll past lyrics for about the song)

Note: An original version of “Crow” is already streaming. This album includes a special version that releases with the full record.

LYRICS —

[Intro]
Crow remembers. Crow stays near.
Crow doesn’t flinch when the grief gets clear.

[Verse 1]
If you see a crow, there’s a reason she came.
She remembers the place where you swallowed your name.
She flies over houses where anger got stuck,
Where silence moved in and called it bad luck.
She sees the first hit, the bruise that grew,
She saw what they did to you.
She waits on the wire while you scream in your bed—
She knows what you meant when you left it unsaid.

[Chorus]
When you see a crow and it stares you back—
That’s not a curse, it’s a mirror crack.
It’s the part of you watching from just offscreen,
It’s the scream in the seams of the in-between.
She doesn’t bring death—she names what’s stuck,
And shows you the places you gave too much.
It’s a warning. A witness. A drum on the wind.
She’s the sound that begins when you stop holding in.

[Hook]
Every crow is a call to rise—
A scream in feathers. A mouth in skies.
Every wing is a wound that flew.
She brings the part I gave too soon.
I gave her the ache. She gave it a sound.
The crow doesn’t flinch. She speaks it out loud.

[Verse 2]
Crows hold funerals. Yeah, it’s real.
They cry when a friend dies. They gather and feel.
They circle the body. They scream and they stare.
They don’t look away. They stay right there.
No one taught them. It’s just what they know—
That when someone falls, the others must show.
They don’t say “move on.” They don’t say “fine.”
They stop and they feel. They honor the sign.

[Verse 3]
The crow sees everything. That’s her job.
She watches the weak and the ones who rob.
She circles the spots where the ghosts still feed—
Where the habit keeps playing the same old scene.
She knows your voice before it got small,
She remembers your name when no one calls.

[Verse 4]
I slept in fists. My jaw was steel.
She circled every bruise I feel.
She nested in the scars I peel—
A shrine made out of what won’t heal.
She drank the night I couldn’t cry.
She caught my ghost before goodbye.
She wears my grief, but twice as high—
A scream that learned how not to die.

[Bridge]
I birthed her from the bitter end—
A crow who does not break or bend.
She’s made of me, but speaks for more.
A thousand girls who slammed that door.
She stitches wings from every sore
And flies where I once knelt before.

[Outro]
So if a crow lands, or flies on through—
She’s here for a reason. She’s here for you.

About the Song

Crow arrives as a watcher. Name the wound.

This song came while I was sitting with grief that had learned how to hide in plain sight. The kind of grief that tightens the jaw, braces the thighs and waits for permission to speak. Crow felt like the part of me that already knew where everything was stored.

What I notice while living with this song

Grief doesn’t disappear when it stays unnamed. It relocates.

Unspoken feeling settles into the body as tension, ache, and holding. The jaw tightens. The shoulders brace. Breath gets shallow. Muscles stay ready for something that already happened. Over time, that vigilance can start to feel like pain, fatigue, inflammation, or illness — the body carrying what the voice never had room to release.

This aligns with what I’ve learned from somatic and mind-body teachings: the body keeps score when emotion goes underground. What isn’t witnessed turns into pressure. What isn’t named looks for another way to speak.

This is where Crow’s role becomes essential.

Crow doesn’t rush grief toward meaning or resolution. She stays present with it. She names what’s there. And that act alone begins to change the body’s relationship to the sensation. When truth gets air, the nervous system softens. When I let myself feel the ache, it can move on.

This echoes teachings I carry from Louise Hay, who wrote extensively about how unexpressed emotion can manifest physically — and how gentle acknowledgment begins the process of release. It also resonates with mind-body frameworks that understand pain and illness as signals rather than failures, messages asking for attention rather than suppression.

Crow doesn’t heal by fixing. She heals by witnessing.

She gives the body permission to stop hiding its history.

Crow as Somatic Witness

In BYRDS, Crow holds the position of the watcher because witnessing comes before change. Before regulation. Before appetite. Before joy.

She marks where grief lives so it doesn’t have to shout through the body anymore.

That’s why this song opens the album. Not because grief is the center — but because attention is.

Once something is seen, the body can begin to reorganize. Molt can release. Blue Jay can speak. Other birds can move freely.

Crow stays near throughout the album as a reminder: nothing moves cleanly until it’s witnessed.

Undercurrents I Carry Here

This song carries the influence of Louise Hay in the practice of naming what the body holds and allowing language to soften internal pressure.

Abraham Hicks echoes here in the understanding that attention directs energy. What receives focus begins to shift.

Aleister Crowley shows up through the act of speaking truth as will in motion — voice aligning inner reality with outer expression, a current that also runs through The Book of the Law.

I hold these teachings as companions, not authorities. This song reflects my understanding so far.

Why This Matters

When grief stays unnamed, it doesn’t stay quiet.
When grief is witnessed, it begins to move.

Crow doesn’t bring death. She brings attention.

And attention, given long enough, makes room for breath.

A Note on the Versions

I considered rewriting this song.

It’s long. It came before I understood structure. It holds more than most tracks do. And at the same time — it’s my most listened-to song.

That tells me something important.

This song arrived exactly as it needed to at the time I wrote it. I was carrying a lot. The length wasn’t excess — it was necessity. I needed the repetition. And the fact that so many people stayed with it tells me I wasn’t alone there.

So I chose to honor the original.

The version included on this album is a special version, shaped to sit inside the larger arc of BYRDS, lyrics untouched. The original also remains as it is still streaming — both are a record of where I was, and what needed a voice then.

A little crow’s on the wire, keeping watch over you. 🐦‍⬛