“Eggshell” is not a slow death in a warm bed. It is an abrupt emergency that begets a siren’s light and the gilded fragility of living after loss. On A Million Easy Payments, Little Kid gives us space and time to consider ourselves and how to sculpt with the energy around us. “Eggshell” is track five, nestled between images of a crumbling statue and an unlit cigarette.

Two acoustic guitars drink from a bright and steady country spring as Kenny Boothby’s vocals tremble with confidence. He duets with himself, often doubling the melody in a lower octave. Boothby’s vibrato, quivering and tearless, already knows the story: we are fragile, but breath comes if you let it.

In “Eggshell,” opaque reflections reveal a life-ending seizure and a widow’s later decision to remarry, change scenery, and bear the imprint of the past. Boothby sings from the perspective of the deceased, who witnesses it all with a low voice and a graceful sympathy:

A darkened carpet and a smiling silence, still referring to a loved one as “babe” though the relationship resembles something else now. A sentimental reference to a cherry cola. If it isn’t yearning when two harmonizing voices come together for a holy swell, it’s love. Some memories are just there to hold us in our fractured states. Not with forgiveness. Just recognition.

Written by Clara Zornado