Two-Dollar Kingdom

Every night at four I climb the stairs
To the room where we left the light on
The smoke is still hanging like a curtain
Over the green felt and the cedar wood

Your glass is still half full of amber dust
Mine is resting on the ring it made
I sit down and square my shoulders up
Still waiting for you to make your play

It was just a shadow from the streetlamp
Falling crooked right across your wrist
I thought I saw you hiding something sharp
You thought I was calling out your name

A siren drowned the half of what you said
And pride made up the rest inside my head
We pushed everything we had into the middle
Over a bet that neither one had made

So keep the cards face down on the table
Keep the bolt thrown heavy on the door
We are the kings of a two-dollar kingdom
Guarding a room we don't live in anymore
I tell the dark I'm never backing down
While I save your seat on the second floor

In the daylight I tell people that I won
That I took the pot and walked out clean
Then I buy two coffees at the corner stand
And leave one cooling on the passenger seat

I keep the radio tuned to your static
Just to prove the speaker isn't blown
A man will burn his own house to the ground
Just to say the ashes are his own

So keep the cards face down on the table
Keep the bolt thrown heavy on the door
We are the kings of a two-dollar kingdom
Guarding a room we don't live in anymore
I tell the dark I'm never backing down
While I save your seat on the second floor

Last night I reached across the velvet cloth
And turned your hand over in the pale light
Just a pair of tens and a crooked queen
Nothing worth the winter in our bones
The dealer has been gone for seven years
Come take your coat and let's go home