4. Cardinal in Mourning — Lyrics
Scroll past the lyrics to read more about this song.
Lyrics
[INTRO]
Morning comes without asking
Light touches what’s gone
I stay where you aren’t
Red finds a place to land
Then gone
Cardinal in mourning
Still moving on
[VERSE]
I loved you deeply
You shaped me
Now you’re gone
grief remains
Time bends around your name
Memory bleeds into light
Love leaves weather behind
Grief sets the sky
I fit inside
Fear offers a place to rest
A branch waits for weight
Red waits with me
I still look for you
…the sky remembers, too
[PRE-CHORUS]
Fear gives me footing
Branch under bone
stand in the ache
But I’m not alone
Cardinal stays close
[CHORUS]
Grief is the sky
Fear is the branch
Cardinal lands
I feel you pass…
(long pause)
Cardinal in mourning
[BRIDGE — fear / branch moment]
I grieve what I lost
I stay here and feel
Your memory meets the moment
Time takes you home
[PRE-CHORUS]
Fear gives me footing
Branch under bone
stand in the ache
But I’m not alone
Cardinal stays close
[CHORUS]
Grief is the sky
Fear is the branch
Cardinal lands
I feel you pass…
(long pause)
Cardinal in mourning
[OUTRO]
Blue above me.
Sky holds
Brown beneath me.
Red between.
Cardinal in mourning
Love still moves
About This Song
This is the song that started the album.
My husband found an artist named David Choe. He talks about emotions a lot, and painting with them. I wanted to try it, so I grabbed my art supplies and wrote the word grief in blue. Then I wrote anger in red, and fear in brown.
Unplanned, the piece became a cardinal.
I let the work be inaccurate and sloppy. I wasn’t painting from logic — I was painting from sensation. When I was finished, I wiped a lot of it away.
This song came from watching grief slow down.
Not the kind of grief that crashes. I didn’t even realize I was carrying these things until they were already on the paper. This is the kind of grief that works gently — the kind that rearranges the sky without asking.
Cardinal in Mourning is about learning how to stand inside loss without needing it to leave. Allowing myself to safely feel it. To mourn what I’ve lost. To mourn what has changed.
It’s about letting grief be big — as big as the sky — while still finding one small place where the body can rest.
A branch.
A moment.
A flash of red.Cardinal says:
I won’t stay here.
But it’s a good place to land when I need it.
Sky, branch, body
This song gave me a simple map:
Grief becomes the sky.
Fear becomes the branch.
The body becomes the place where weight is allowed.
Fear isn’t treated as an enemy here.
It offers footing.
It gives something solid to stand on while everything else feels vast.
Why it sits here in the album
After Cost of Loss, which speaks grief in numbers and questions, this song moves grief into the body and the world.
Outside.
Into weather.
Into color and weight and stillness.
It’s a song about staying with that feeling.
What I was learning
I don’t need to rush the ache.
I don’t need to move on.
I can stand where I was and let love keep moving.
This song taught me that grief can hold me
without collapsing me.
Thank you for standing here a moment with me.
Thank you for letting the sky be big.
A cardinal stays close, reminding you that you’re loved.
