Listen to the track:
🎵 THE MANGLE
Verse 1
She bent at the waist with a twist of the cloth
Scrubbing the steps like time had got lost
The radio played but she didn’t hear
Hands in suds and second gear
Verse 2
Hands gone grey from bleach and pail
Still hemmed a skirt and stitched a tale
Turned a collar with fingers worn
Fixed the seams of clothes we’d torn
Chorus
The mangle clacked and the steam rose slow
She didn’t cry and she didn’t show
What the war and the wash had done to her back
But I heard it groan in every wrack
She was quiet
But she was steel
Verse 3
The jar lids sealed with a twist and pop
Soft fruit bottled from a garden crop
Apron stiff with a week’s old starch
Still she moved like she owned the march
Verse 4
No fancy buttons or washing machines
Just muscle, rhythm, buckets and beams
She wiped her brow on a tea-towel crown
And ran the house with a steady hand
Chorus
The mangle clacked and the kettle sighed
She said little, just worked and dried
What the years and the men and the cold had done
Still she smiled when the jam set firm
She was quiet
But she was fire
Bridge
You’d miss her power if you blinked
But it lived in every shirt she inked
And I’ve never seen a queen so proud
As the woman who’d not speak out loud
Final Chorus
The mangle clacked and the floorboards creaked
The world was hers but she never preached
With a mop, a rag, a darning thread
She made a throne from a single bed
She was quiet
But she was mine