Mary's Song

Let me tell you a story
Of a girl I met in January named Mary/
Used to sit beside me in university psychology/
I remember first day of
Second term I was
Too shy to even say “hi”
Taken by the beauty of her
Brown skin, hair, and eyes/
Soft-spoken, hard workin’, quick thinkin’
Intelligent, always staying on the
Straight and narrow
Never veering off the path she was meant to follow/
Pretty quickly we became friendly
No romances, no private dances
Though we started hanging out
Between classes/
Week after Spring break weekend
Mary told me she was State-side
Jingle dancing in The Garden/
Said it felt like a dream in Eden/
All while faking a smile
Fighting like hell to conceal
Pain inside I could see within her eyes/
Asked her what happened after class
But she just shrugged it off
And changed the subject/
In hindsight that probably should’ve
Made me a bit more suspect
But I was too oblivious
To think of her as a prospect of violence/
The hell if I knew

HOOK
There’s darkness outside
So, don’t forget the light/
Don’t let it die
Cuz I don’t wanna say goodbye/
Is your hourglass out of sand?
Are you missing or are you dead/?
My friend/
There’s darkness outside
So, don’t forget the light/
Don’t let it die
Cuz I don’t wanna say goodbye/
Don’t wanna say goodbye/

Couple weeks passed by
Since I saw the pain pass
Through her eyes/
Gotta be honest, thought everything was fine
Until one evening on May eighteenth/
We were hanging out drinking at a lounge/
One round in Mary looks at me
And stops my whole world with just
Six words/
“I was raped during spring break”
She says tearfully/
Truthfully, I didn’t know what to do
Feeling helpless, pissed, and confused/
Do I pull her close or wipe her eyes?
Frozen and uncertain tryna think
Of something so she knows I’m listening/
Finally ask her what she needs
She says somewhere quiet we can talk in peace/
So, I pay our tabs and head for the car
Parked down the street/
Listen in stunned silence
Getting more and more pissed by the minute
As Mary confesses every fucking second/
Swear to God,
If I ever find that coward,
I’ma kill that motherfucker/!
Two hours later drop her off
Then drive home slowly,
Thinking about how

HOOK
There’s darkness outside
So, don’t forget the light/
Don’t let it die
Cuz I don’t wanna say goodbye/
Is your hourglass out of sand?
Are you missing or are you dead/?
My friend/
There’s darkness outside
So, don’t forget the light/
Don’t let it die
Cuz I don’t wanna say goodbye/
Don’t wanna say goodbye/

That was on a Thursday/
Saw her the next night
Standing on a corner half past nine/
But it ain’t like that cuz
Mary kept it straight/
Walking home from a coffee shop on 6th and Main/
Working hard on her studies grinding away/
Shoulda said something because
Little did I know
That would be the night she’d be stolen away/
Two days later get a notification
On my phone with
Mary’s face and description
Saying she’s missing/
And it breaks my heart because
I know she ain’t coming back/
Not because she’s dead
But because she’s another
Missing Indigenous woman/
Another statistic, another addition
To this country’s growing epidemic
That has no end in sight/
Now I never knew a woman named Mary,
But this story is still a living reality/
I swear this crisis is like a modern day
Racial cleansing that no one is seeing/
No one believing that being
Indigenous is hazardous especially since

HOOK (x2)
There’s darkness outside
So, don’t forget the light/
Don’t let it die
Cuz I don’t wanna say goodbye/
Is your hourglass out of sand?
Are you missing or are you dead/?
My friend/
There’s darkness outside
So, don’t forget the light/
Don’t let it die
Cuz I don’t’ wanna say goodbye/
Don’t wanna say goodbye/