Valkoi - Eight Summers

I wrote the truth for strangers' eyes

While the desert ate my little girl

One set of footprints, then the sky

Swallowed her whole out of the world

We dug the dunes with bleeding hands

We prayed to gods we never knew

Eight summers bleached across the sand

And every night I dreamed of you

Then the door swung open on its own

And a small voice called me by my name

You came back, you came back

But your eyes don't hold the light

Something walked you through that black

And it wears your smile tonight

I would trade the world to keep you

I would burn for what you'd lost

But the thing that crossed the desert

Made you carry what it costs

You don't cast a shadow on the wall

You hum a song that's older than the stone

The dog won't come, the mirrors fall

And the house breathes like it's not our own

Your mother holds you, holds you tight

But I see how the candles bend

There's a colder country in your sight

And it follows where the corridors end

So I'll bar the windows, salt the floor

But it learned my name out in the waste

You came back, you came back

But your eyes don't hold the light

Something walked you through that black

And it wears your smile tonight

I would trade the world to keep you

I would burn for what you'd lost

But the thing that crossed the desert

Made you carry what it costs

Tell me where you've been, little one

Tell me what you promised in the dark

What did you give it for the road back home?

Everything... everything...

And now it's standing in the hall

Wearing the daughter I called back

You came back, you came back

And I can't undo the night

I called your name across the black

And the wrong thing answered right

I would trade the world to free you

But it's far too late to choose

For the desert kept my daughter

And it sent me back the news

Eight years of sand...

Eight years of sand...

And you came back.