This Dirt Don't Wash Off

Miles away from Mississippi, got a different view

The sky is bigger out here, the air feels kinda new

I tell myself I'm better off, I swear that it's the truth

But last night I swear I smelled the rain on a hot tin roof

I don't miss the judgment, and I don't miss the pain

I don't miss the feelin' of bein' stuck in the same lane

But sometimes in the quiet, I can hear a passing train

And a part of me is on it, headed south again.

You can take the girl out of the Delta, that's what people say

But you can't take the Delta out, it finds a way to stay

It's in the way I talk, the way I stand up to the fight

It's the ghost of a magnolia in the middle of the night

I scrub my hands 'til they are raw, I try to make them clean

From the memory of the struggle and the ugliness I've seen

But there's a certain kind of stain, a faded shade of green

'Cause this dirt don't wash off, know what I mean?

I remember summer evenings on the backroads out of Petal

The beauty of the landscape at war with the devil

You learn to love the monster 'cause it's all you've ever known

The sweetest, deadliest garden that was ever grown

And here they don't know nothin' 'bout that humid, heavy air

The weight of all that history, the unspoken despair

I escaped the trap, but damn it, I'm still caught inside the snare

A part of me is grateful, and a part of me's still there.

You can take the girl out of the Delta, that's what people say

But you can't take the Delta out, it finds a way to stay

It's in the way I talk, the way I stand up to the fight

It's the ghost of a magnolia in the middle of the night

I scrub my hands 'til they are raw, I try to make them clean

From the memory of the struggle and the ugliness I've seen

But there's a certain kind of stain, a faded shade of green

'Cause this dirt don't wash off, know what I mean?

It's a complicated rhythm, a bittersweet return

To all the hardest lessons that I ever had to learn

It's the foundation of my fury, the reason my fire burns

A love-hate letter to the home for which I'll always yearn

But never go back to... never go back to...

This dirt is in my bones now... it's a part of everything I do.