[Verse] You remember me with my sleeves rolled high Talking with my hands, never asking why You remember how I filled a room with words How I made my certainty sound absurd You say I knew exactly what I wanted and when You say I never needed anyone to give me approval back then The person in your story wears my face But I start wondering if I ever filled that space [Pre-Chorus] The way you tell it back makes me question what was real A version I can almost touch, but never quite feel [Chorus] Afterimage, you kept the version that you knew Afterimage, a faded outline that still looks like me to you The person in your memory remains Long after I've outgrown the shape that it contains I can see why you remember me that way But I don't know if I was ever quite the same Afterimage, if that's all that's left when I move on Then maybe some things stay behind when the person is gone You hold the version that I left behind You speak of him as if he still were mine A former self you somehow still can manage Afterimage [Verse] You remember rain, I remember summer heat You remember the town, I remember the street You say I said it first, I swear it wasn't me You remember what it meant, I remember what I believed We kept the same old story, changed line by line Until yours became your truth and mine became mine Now every little detail carries something new And I can't tell what I remember from what I learned from you [Pre-Chorus] Maybe neither version is as certain as it seems And what we call remembering is partly what we believe [Chorus] Afterimage, now I see the shape I kept inside Afterimage, the younger me I carried like a guide The face I gave my history, the one I made my own A version I built my life around, a version I had known Maybe I was never who I thought I knew And some of me was borrowed from your view Afterimage, if you changed the story just to make it fit Then maybe what you call my past was partly made of it I thought I knew the face I carried through That my younger self was mine and true But even that was partly someone else's image Afterimage [Verse] There are photographs my parents keep upstairs A story my old friends still tell as if they were there A stranger will remember every word I said that night My neighbour remembers nothing, but remembers me alright There's an old interview that makes me sound so sure A school friend sees that version and assumes I still endure And every person carries something I once gave A different little history that follows me till today [Bridge] So which one is the real one when they all know something true? The person they remember, or the person I grew into? The photograph, the conversation, every story passed around The things I swear I never did, the things I can't recall Maybe none of them were wrong, Maybe there's a distinct part of me in every version And they only captured one small part at all I spent so long deciding which reflection should remain I never thought the fragments could belong to me the same I don't need to prove that every memory is right I don't need to erase the ones that don't survive If every version holds a piece I can't replace Then let them keep their distance, let them keep their place [Final-Chorus] Afterimage, you can stay without becoming who I am Afterimage, you can fade without becoming something false Every version can exist without the blame None of them can hold the whole of me inside a single frame I can let the old reflections carry on I can change without pretending they were wrong Afterimage, I don't need to know which one was really me If every past I ever had still left a part of me [Outro] I still roll my sleeves up when I have too much to say Still talk with both my hands like I did back in the day I catch my body repeating something from before A small unconscious gesture I don't question anymore It passes through me quietly, then disappears from sight A fragment of the person I was, I am, and still will be, moving in the light Afterimage What you remember What I remember What remains What will be Afterimage Afterimage
