(Untold Pretties)

[Verse 1]
It started raining just as I dropped her off at her car
The sun was on the cusp of rising
And it was still cool from the late winter
But the days were now warming into spring time
She walked halfway to the car
And then turned around, looked at me and smiled
Then ran back to my window as I rolled it down
For her to stick her head in and kiss me one more time
Then run back in the rain to her car, get in and drive off
I sat there for a time and the rain started
To drizzle into my opened window
Sitting in the parking lot of the Southern Touch, thinking
As far as I'm concerned, it was the last time I ever saw her

[Verse 2]
On the drive out to the funeral
To bury my granddaddy, it began to snow
Growing up in North Alabama, it seldom snowed
Sometimes a couple of years would go by
Sometimes it might snow twice in a season
But it was still a novelty
The sky was as gray as an open chord
And as plaintive as fog in black and white
My granddaddy always liked snow, and somehow I did too
The drive was out the old Savannah Highway
Which was still two lane then
We wound around dead man's curve
Where that lady from the Sunbeam
Bread wrapper was killed in a head on back when I was little
Out past our family's farm to the little Methodist church
Where once upon a time
My grandmother had gone to Sunday school
The same humble structure that witnessed
Their marriage of forty two years
And where just a few years ago I'd gone to Youth group
And Methodist Youth Foundation campouts
And hay rides and lock-ins

[Verse 3]
Maybe I thought about that sad snowy morning
And burying my granddaddy those few years later
As I drove home in the rain, home to my fiancée's bed
Just a few weeks shy of getting married
With the taste of an old high school sweetheart
Lingering on my lips and fingers
And the rain started pouring down
Out of the sky like a wonderful wrath from God
A God who might spite me
Even as I turned from His grasp and shunned His embrace
I was plotting an escape that I was still
A few years away from having the guts to pull off
Years later, that realization became a personal hell
That followed me around for a while
And then didn't anymore
You can only carry hell around
So long before it gets to be a drag