MUSIC FOR SALE

Snakebone and Honey

[Verse 1]
Raelynn drove the gravel road at dusk
past where the mailbox used to lean.
The house was gone—she knew that.
Still, she slowed to see.
The foundation held its blackened stone,
the chimney crooked, half-decayed.
She parked and stepped through broken glass
to face a ghost named Honey.

[Verse 2]
The snakebone sat in a mason jar
half-buried where the porch had stood.
Raelynn found it once down by the creek,
kept it for her daughter’s sake.
Folk said snakebones held old power—
turned away the evil eye,
kept sickness from the door,
made bad luck pass on by.
Some said it scared off bad intentions,
but they find you anyway.
She buried it there the night she burned
the only home they’d ever had.

[Chorus]
The snakebone’s still white in the ashes,
a promise left behind.
It was meant to keep the darkness out,
but the danger came from inside.
She held it like it mattered,
but it couldn’t save Honey.
What good is a charm
that does nothing—
that just sits there
while what you love dies?

[Verse 3]
She crouched beside the broken jar,
its glass warped, blistered by the flames.
The snakebone still was whole, untouched—
like love, it refused to break.
Raelynn found Honey in the hallway,
thin from weeks of not eating.
The pills started after Honey’s daddy left,
got worse when her uncle stayed those summers,
when locked doors meant nothing,
when thirteen felt like drowning.
A cold needle lay by her hand,
Honey’s fist held the locket she’d worn as a child.

[Verse 4]
Sadness had lived in her too long—
in the quiet, in her corners, in her bones.
Raelynn stayed for months—cleaned the walls,
repainted the kitchen.
Tried to sleep in Honey’s bed.
Then one morning she poured gasoline
on the curtains, the mattress, the hallway floor.
She burned the house
because it remembered too much.

[Verse 5]
Raelynn left the land to rot behind her,
sold nothing, signed no deed.
Took a room in a town three counties south.
No one knew Raelynn’s name.
Worked nights at a diner.
Scrubbed smoke from her hair.
When asked if she had kids—
she said her daughter passed.

[Verse 6]
And now Raelynn's back, years later,
standing in what the weeds reclaimed.
She brought no flowers, no apology—
she just came to find the jar.
There’s no forgiveness in these ruins,
no comfort in the stones.
She walked through glass and soot
just to find that damn bone.

[Bridge]
Raelynn held the snakebone in both hands,
stared like it owed her something holy.
The white bone caught the dying light,
smooth as promises, hard as lies.
She thought about the creek where she found it,
about Honey’s small fingers tracing its curves
when she was six.

[Outro]
Raelynn put the bone back in the jar,
set it where the porch used to be.
Some ghosts you can’t outrun.
Some houses never really burn.
She drove the gravel road at dusk.
She kept and wore Honey’s locket.
Inside—her girl at thirteen,
tired eyes, crooked smile.