3. SMOTHERER (The Empress) — Lyrics From Upcoming FVNERAL Album

We’re inside the second act of the FVNERAL ritual album—“Name the Ghost.”
The ghost is not your mother, not your ex — the ghost is what you had to become to survive

Album: FVNERAL
Artist: Loui Crow
Streaming: All platforms
📱 @louicrow on TikTok / FB / YouTube / IG

🖤 ABOUT THE SONG — SMOTHERER (The Empress)

(keep scrolling for lyrics)

The Smotherer is the ghost of devotion turned disease—love that overfeeds until it starves itself. She mothers from scarcity, measuring worth in empty plates and grateful faces.

This ghost learned early that care earns safety. She keeps the house spotless, the bodies fed, the air tense. Her prayers sound like checklists. Her lullabies end in migraines. She’s the Empress reversed: nurture inverted, fertility as control, affection as occupation.

I wrote this after watching myself parent everyone but me. I realized I wasn’t giving—I was guarding. If they stayed close, I could predict the storm. If they needed me, they wouldn’t leave. But every act of “help” became a leash, and every gift a hidden plea: Please don’t disappear.

The Smotherer’s tragedy isn’t her love—it’s her exhaustion. She gives past the point of pulse. She calls depletion devotion and confuses collapse for care.

Her healing began when she dropped the apron and ate first. When she realized love doesn’t live in martyrdom. The Empress upright creates; the Empress reversed consumes herself.

To resurrect her, I have to feed differently: to nourish instead of prove. The ghost dies when I do not rush to refill. The power returns when I taste what I made.

🔮 MYTH MAP INSIDE THE SONG

In Crow language, The Smotherer is the Ghost of Overgrowth—roots strangling their own tree.
She is the reverse of The Empress, whose natural law is abundance and flow. Where Empress gives from overflow, Smotherer gives from panic.

Magically, this is the moment in FVNERAL where nurture learns boundaries. The first three ghosts—Manipulator (Magician), Escapist (High Priestess), and Smotherer (Empress)—form the opening trinity: tongue, silence, and overcare. Each one distorts creation.

The Smotherer teaches that love without sovereignty is servitude. Her altar is the kitchen table. Her offering is her own body.
She confuses being irreplaceable with being loved.
But when she finally feeds herself, the spell breaks.

This is the burial of The Empress Reversed—the ghost who equated exhaustion with grace.

🕯️ ABOUT THE ALBUM — FVNERAL

🖤 This is my tarot study. My autopsy of survival.

FVNERAL isn’t healing—it’s replacement. Ghosts built from 22 Tarot cards, each one a Major Arcana reversed, each one a false self I have to exhume.
The mission remains: Name the ghost. Witness the symptom. Write the eulogy. Seal the gate.

A ghost is not a person. It’s the you that built systems to survive them. The perfectionist. The charmer. The caretaker. Each one learned a kind of magic to stay alive—and now must be unlearned to stay real.

Each track is a sealed chapter, a ghost released to ash.
When all 22 have been named and buried, what remains is Function—breath without vigilance, love without armor, motion without mask.

🗣️ CROW AFFIRMATION

“I eat first.
The ghost waits outside.”

🎵 LYRICS — SMOTHERER (The Empress)

[Intro]
I am the Empress, I plate to possess.
I am the Smotherer, cling in my chest.
Ghost in my apron, I mother another.
I cover, I tether—I smother, I smother.

[Verse 1]
I’m the Smotherer, gut full of stones,
Empress with cramps that rattle my bones.
Clipped my wings, became the road,
My shadow bends with the weight I pack.
If they drift too far, I’ll lose my place,
tighten my grip, I’m queen and slave.
Give and give, it makes me happy… mostly,
Cling to the role till it owns me, closely.
Nausea under pressure, sweet cravings later,
Break my own body to be caretaker.
I need to know every step, every whim,
Drain myself dry just to anchor them in.
Every ache became my hymn,
Saint of absence, light’s gone dim.
I tell myself it had to be,
But the grave I made is swallowing me.

[Pre-Chorus]
Ghost hid my grief in a pie crust shell,
Ghost served it warm so they couldn’t tell.
Stitched my want into someone else’s skin,
Lost my shape where their breath begins.

[Chorus]
Ghost in the kitchen, I feed to thrive,
If no one is hungry, I’m barely alive.
Don’t turn away, I crack, I shake,
I only exist in the love I make.
If I stop giving, their eyes might stray,
So I bind them close in my quiet way.

[Verse 2]
I’m the Smotherer, throned in their need,
Bend myself hollow so they can succeed.
Hoard their hunger, absorb their pains,
Helping’s devotion that leaves me in chains.
Cling through the night so they can’t see,
If they don’t need me, who will I be?
Hands start shaking when I reach too far,
Spill boiling water so they’ll see the scar.
Afraid of rejection if I show affection,
Sweeten the silence, then serve the infection.
I think it’s love, but it curdles to hate,
Ulcer reminds me—I swallowed too late.
Maybe I think if I’m useful, I’m lovable,
But every goodbye makes me gullible.
If I stop bending, will they still stay?
I’d rather break than be in the way.

[Pre-Chorus Variation]
Ghost scrubbed my voice in a bucket of bleach,
Hung it to dry where no one could reach.
Traded my dreams for a kitchen grave,
My silence for vertigo, my body enslaved.

[Chorus]
Ghost in the kitchen, I feed to thrive,
If no one is hungry, I’m barely alive.
Don’t turn away, I crack, I shake,
I only exist in the love I make.
If I stop giving, their eyes might stray,
So I bind them close in my quiet way.

[Bridge]
Ghost says “Break yourself, that proves you care.”
I say “Breaking only keeps me there.”
Ghost says “Look at all I gave, look how I bled.”
I say “But I erased myself instead.”
The Smotherer dies, the ghost obeys.
Her anthem is silence, no echo plays.

[Chorus]
Ghost in the kitchen, I feed to thrive,
If no one is hungry, I’m barely alive.
Don’t turn away, I crack, I shake,
I only exist in the love I make.
If I stop giving, their eyes might stray,
So I bind them close in my quiet way.

[Outro]
Apron drops, doorway wide.
I eat first—ghost outside.
The Gate is sealed.

🎧 SMOTHERER (The Empress) — streaming everywhere

Thank you for reading, if you made it this far.

🪶 CROW BLESSING
May the hands that once served remember how to hold.
May the mouth that fed others taste its own creations
May the meal be warm on the table when you get to it.

🕳 The FVNERAL continues.
The next Ghost: 4. COMMANDER (The Emperor)
Leave the lights on.