From the album MJ Lenderman
This song talks to someone who escaped their past while standing next to the ghost of a friendship that didn't. The friend who plays basketball becomes the friend who sells drugs or maybe gets locked up without the narrator ever checking which one actually happened. By the end, the reassurance that someone 'got out' collapses into smaller and smaller time frames until it's just about surviving last night.
There was peace / In our sleep / In our minds / In our hearts / When you woke up
Past tense for peace, present tense for waking. The peace only existed while unconscious, which means the person being addressed wakes into something that isn't peaceful. The song starts at the exact moment relief ends.
I know / How many years since the first time I came over and the first time that we kissed / I have a friend / I haven't talked to him
The narrator can track exactly how long it's been since intimacy with the person they're addressing but can't say when they last spoke to the friend. One relationship gets measured in years, the other in vague stretches of 'a long long time,' which tells you which one the narrator actually abandoned.
We used to play basketball now he sells drugs or maybe he's locked up
The 'or maybe' does all the work. The narrator doesn't know if the friend is dealing or imprisoned, which means they haven't asked, haven't visited, haven't done anything except let basketball turn into a guess about incarceration. The song doesn't condemn this. It just states it.
I'm glad you got out / Of all the bad things you've been in
This line plays as comfort but it's also the narrator congratulating someone for escaping the world the friend is still stuck in. The relief isn't about the addressee healing. It's about them leaving people behind, which might include the narrator eventually.
If only this once / If only this mornin' / If only last night
The time frame shrinks with each repetition. First it's 'this once,' which could mean anything. Then it's this morning. Then it's just last night. The reassurance that everything's alright gets smaller and smaller until it's barely covering twelve hours, which means the narrator knows nothing is actually alright and the escape won't hold.
The song never says what the bad things were or whether the friend is actually locked up because those details would require the narrator to have stayed close enough to know. Instead it just stands in the gap between someone who escaped and someone who didn't, offering shrinking reassurances that sound more like the narrator trying to convince themselves than the person they're talking to.