There's a ghost in Chattanooga wearing my old face
Walking roads I used to walk, sleeping in my place
He drinks at Murphy's Tavern every Friday night
Orders what I ordered, picks the same damn fights
He knows the back way home through Missionary Ridge
Knows which floorboards creak crossing that old wooden bridge

He's got my habits, got my scars, got my mother's eyes
But I can't go back and meet him 'cause one of us would die

There's a ghost in Chattanooga
And he's living in my skin
He's the man I was before
The stranger I've been
I left that town at twenty
But part of me remains
There's a ghost in Chattanooga
And he still knows my name

He remembers every barstool, every borrowed bed
Every promise that I broke and every lie I said
He had a wife he lost slowly, got kids he is learning to see
He's me before I sobered up, me before I fled
The Tennessee River runs between who I am and was
But ghosts don't recognize borders and ghosts don't know because

They're stuck repeating history like a scratch in an old song
I moved to Nashville to escape him but I brought him all along

There's a ghost in Chattanooga
And he's living in my skin
He's the man I was before
The stranger I've been
I left that town in 2000
But I'm still haunting those streets
There's a ghost in Chattanooga
Wearing my old heartbeat

Sometimes late at night I feel him
Trying on my voice again
Whispering the things I used to say
Back when anger was my friend
I'm building something different now
Piece by broken piece
But you can't outrun your shadow
And the dead don't give you peace

Maybe one day I'll drive back through just to see what's changed

See if he's still standing where I left him in the rain
See if he forgives me for abandoning that life
For choosing to be stranger than familiar suicide
But I know what I'd find there staring back at me
The man I killed to survive, the ghost I had to be
And between November first and December thirteenth's song
Are all the reasons why I left and all the reasons I stayed gone

There's a ghost in Chattanooga
Still drinking at my bar
Still driving my old roads
Still wearing my old scars
I'm forty-six in Nashville now
But thirty-one back there
There's a ghost in Chattanooga
And he's got my color hair
Yeah, there's a ghost in Chattanooga
And he's everything I fled
Sometimes I wonder if I'm living
Or if I'm the one who's dead

[whispered over fading guitar]
See you around, old friend
See you in the mirror
See you in Chattanooga
Getting further, getting nearer