Caution Tape (Dupont)

Dupont Circle's long escalator shaft has its own particular physics: one machine out of service behind caution tape, one machine packed with people in single file, everyone moving and no one really moving. There's a WMATA worker with a clipboard near the caution tape, marking something down with the unhurried authority of a man who has seen this escalator break before and will see it break again. The rubber handrail squeaks. A briefcase presses into your shoulder. Somewhere behind you, someone exhales slowly through their nose — not a sigh exactly, more like a pressure release, the specific sound DC commuters make when they are frustrated and have decided not to show it.

「Caution Tape (Dupont)」lives in that sound. The song takes its time going upward — wiry guitar over a locked bass and drum groove, a dry mid-tempo that doesn't build toward anything cathartic because the commute doesn't either. The chorus arrives the way Q Street arrives: not as relief, just as the next thing. The third verse exits without repeating it — once you're out on the grey Connecticut Avenue afternoon, there's nothing left to circle back to. The yellow tape stays where it is. The worker marks his clipboard. Everyone else walks north.