Shiki XO

in the dream, you knock your knee against mine just because and we pass smoke between our open mouths in the dark

this isn’t how my daddy raised me, you’ll have a corpse before a wife

dirty blood — 3/14/25 (march fourteenth)

4 minutes and 4 seconds, made by me and brody mckeegan

i wrote this song to deal with a recurring trauma dream surrounding some things that happened when i was little and some stories i heard about what happened to my gram when she was a little girl. it’s heavy

it’s also the first ghostdaughter song with drums

i can’t wait to show you

here’s a presave <3

all my secrets is yours now

i’ve been holding and nurturing this body of work for literal YEARS and as terrifying as it is to let go, i’m ready. i hope that these five songs can mean as much to some of you as they do to me. take good care of them for me, okay?

lyric breakdown

“so, it’s just me and this tap water all full of lead

and we circle the drain ‘til i go back to bed”

— LA tap water is gross and so am i

“it’s just you in the morning, you’re all that i want

and you’re so far away, i hope the bombs don’t go off”

— homesickness, a feeling of an impending doom/violent end

“and this world is bad theater, the 3rd act is on

and it’s falling apart ‘til the curtain draws

there’s a light i can’t see but it shines on the stage

and i’m sewn to my seat like i’m part of the play”

— it’s all falling apart and i am powerless to stop it. there is an illusion i cannot quite see through. maybe this illusion is life itself.

“is it true? what you told me an autumn ago

empty words in the darkness from mouths full of smoke”

— not even the ones you love are outside the illusion

“it’s just me and this medicine no one prescribed

it gets caught in my throat and i choke and i cry”

— neither are the drugs. numbing yourself stops working eventually.

“it’s just you in the mirror always judging me

take my eyes and my tongue, i forgot how to speak”

— self-hatred, self-denial, trying to not give up

“it’s okay, give it time, it’ll all be alright

there’s a girl in the shower, she’s singing and alive

there’s a dog in the graveyard so patient and sad

there’s this place we can go where it won’t be so bad”

— reveling in the ecstasy of a life drenched in grief, the girl singing in my shower is a recurring hallucination, and idk if it’s me or the dog that’s in the graveyard waiting

“there’s fresh air and clean clothes and silence you can stand

your grandmother’s in the kitchen with flour on her hands”

— the most beautiful place i can imagine

“and police don’t exist there, you won’t have to hide

and police don’t exist there, and no one has died”

— acab and also “song for a chicken named jenny” by pat the bunny means a lot to me and there’s a line where he says ‘here in your arms my darling police don’t exist’

“and we never tried the hard stuff and no one has died

and our bodies worked perfect and no one has died

and nobody owns nothing and no one has died

and no one has died and no one has died”

— would’ve could’ve should’ve-ing my way into heaven

“it’s just me in this bedroom rewriting cliches

cutting open my sickness every fucking day

and it all tastes like ashes and blood in my throat

there’s a man with a gun in my childhood home”

— retreating into solitude trying to make sense of it, the violent machinery of my mind and the loneliness of this life. then being robbed of even the safety that should exist in your own mind or in your childhood bedroom.

“and you’re tied to the radiator, burns on your wrist

nothing bad happens here since my mother got sick”

— the death of innocence. the marks left by cruelty.

“and the walls are asbestos and no one has died

and the water’s still poison but no one has died

and the kids all have cancer but no one has died

and my body’s a target but no one has died”

— old houses i grew up in, LA tap water + dirty water in my hometown after Hurricane Helene, cancer being everywhere in my life and my family, existing as a trans person in america but particularly in the south

“and no one has died” x12

— obviously we have all died. everyone i loved. everyone. this is a prayer. a desperate and ultimately futile prayer.

“i can’t be your man, i only come the way you say i am

i can’t be your girl, i’ll be your gun”

— besides the obvious struggles with gender identity, this is an expression of how, when you don’t know exactly who you are, it can feel like you’re always simultaneously too much and not enough for the people you love.

“my baby looks like hollywood, i’m doublewides and dollar shots

i like it here the best when i’m drunk”

— i’m from the south and at the time i wrote this i was living in LA surrounded by a very different world than the one i knew. i felt i would never be able to (or want to) wash off where i come from and what i am. also being in such a foreign, shallow, dissociative culture does lend itself nicely to substance abuse.

“and i look like an animal, always too much or not enough

the pills will eat my insides ‘til i’m done”

— kinda the first two put together, the unkillable feral part of me which will never fit cleanly into their world, their order of dichotomy and separation. also full disclosure there were a lot of pills in my life at this time.

“my baby’s sleeping beauty all k*pin and makeup wipes

they like you here the best when you’re young”

— see these pretty pink plastic places are still dark in their own way. and for those of us who remain undomesticated they will chew you up and spit you out if you’re not careful.

“i might run away but i’ll come back

and being a bird in my teeth

i’ll never be an inside dog”

— a little phoebe bridgers moon song reference here but also returning to this concept of feral vs consumable beauty. i’ll never be an inside dog. i’ll never be the one you can show your family or your government or your big shiny corporation. i’ll be the mangy thing with blood dripping from her mouth who you love for her honesty.

“all my secrets”

5 song EP by ghostdaughter

december 20th 2024

presave here

‘if i told you all my secrets’

a song i wrote in september of 2021, while still closeted. it’s about the trauma of my birth, my relationship with my mother, and that feeling of keeping a secret from the whole world including yourself.

the guitar part and lyrics came to me in about 20 minutes, i recorded a voice memo of it and showed a friend who said it was the best thing i’d ever written.

i told her i needed to wait until i was ready to be that honest. it took three years but it’s finally time.

a few of my favorite lyrics:

“they fed my tiny body candlelight”

“if i told you all my secrets, i would turn back into sand”

“i just called to hear your voice, and i’m so sorry”

the EP comes out december 20th (in 2 weeks)

i still remember it all - out now