[Verse 1] She sits in the dark of the room she was given The purple surrounds her like weather, like fate She doesn’t perform it — it breathes from inside her The kind of a color that learned it too late
Her hands are still folded Her eyes are still open She’s looking at something that isn’t the wall I watch from the edge of the fracture that brought me And I feel the shape of the thing before it falls
She knows She has always known The pattern arrived at her door With a crown and a cost And a word she can’t say anymore
[Pre-Chorus] And something in me goes quiet The way you go quiet When you recognize a wound You thought was only yours
[Chorus] Purple woman Sitting in the ruin of the light you were born to carry Purple woman They took the sun and gave you something dark to marry You were never this You were never ruin You were never the storm they needed you to be Purple woman I see what was taken I see what was left behind the walls where nobody sees
[Verse 2] I watch her stand slowly and walk to the window The city below her is burning in red The people are shouting the name they have given her The purple, the ruin, the grief overhead
But her face in the glass is the face of a woman Who remembers a morning when none of this was When the light came easy when the warmth was willing When she was the answer before she became the cause
She knows She has always known The church came for her with a different tool Not at the beginning — they let her bloom Then took the root
[Pre-Chorus] And something in me goes cold The way you go cold When the mirror shows you the road you almost walked
[Chorus] Purple woman Sitting in the ruin of the light you were born to carry Purple woman They took the sun and gave you something dark to marry You were never this You were never ruin You were never the storm they needed you to be Purple woman I see what was taken I see what was left behind the walls where nobody sees
[Bridge — Pandora’s full recognition] I know this architecture I was built inside its walls I was taken at the beginning You were taken in the fall
They gave me time to be nothing They gave you time to be the light And then they came and took it anyway And called the damage right
I am standing on the other side of your becoming I am watching what you carry into the dark And I cannot reach you I cannot stop this I can only see you the way you really are
The warm one The sun’s half The daughter they broke who did not know she was breaking
[Final Chorus — key lift, aching] Purple woman You were never the wound, you were always the healing Purple woman They didn’t corrupt darkness — they corrupted feeling You were never this You were always light You were always the half that was supposed to make it right Purple woman I see what remains there I see the sun still burning underneath the purple night
[Outro — barely sung, just Pandora watching] She turns from the window She goes to the door She knows what comes next And she opens it anyway
Purple woman I know your name It is not what they called you
I will carry it when you are gone