La Petite Jamon

Lyrics

[Intro]
I have been a door on Cherokee Road since '23.
Pringle drew me. Smith signed the plans.
Ninety families later, these two arrived.
I know them now. I did not know I would.

[Verse 1]
He is the Alchemist of Atlanta.
A Southern ledger older than my walls
by a Tennessee century.
A quiet Austin bank. A house of payments.
Small-batch bottles he backs by day
and shakes by night —
a name you would not know to listen for
unless you already did.

[Verse 2]
She signs her invitations by hand.
Every envelope has la petite jamon
in the corner — a pig in French,
a watercolor pig who does not know she is a pig.
She paints quietly. She paints a lot. She paints.

[Chorus]
Four sets of shoes at my front door.
Four rhythms climbing my stair.
Two anchors holding the whole colonnade steady.
This is what my hundredth year sounds like.

[Bridge]
I have had many keepers. Some better, some brief.
These two keep me the way a house wants to be kept:
watercolors mailed from my front hall,
a shaker on the bar,
four small voices rehearsing four different Octobers.

[Outro]
La petite jamon on the corner of the envelope.
An alchemist with a shaker in one hand and a ledger in the other.
Four small Octobers still to come.
A hundred-year door. Another hundred. Somehow.