the lights are cold, there’s no one left to love. I sold the fire for a crown of night, I drum, I cry, I don’t know who I am. Forget my name the contract is written in forgetting. Seventeen springs, hands on the wood, a dream too big for the house. Father holds out a door of glass, the son takes the street and the wind. He leaves the fire in the fireplace, the voices around the table. A man with no shadow holds out a paper folded like a star too close: “Get on the carousel, but never forget the price.” Forget my name the lights are cold, there’s no one left to love. I sold the fire for a crown of night, I drum, I cry, I don’t know who I am. Forget my name the contract is written in forgetting. The halls open like mouths, the name sticks to the walls. But the mirror stays a black lake, no hand on his shoulder. One day the wind tells him low that the house has gone dark. The ones he left are gone with no address. The carousel doesn’t stop. He sleeps in sheets too white, in rooms that have no smell. The crowd screams a borrowed name, he is still looking for his own. Sometimes a dream cuts through the skin: a table, a laugh, a hand. At dawn it all washes out again, only the rumble of the drums is left. Glory tastes like ash. Forget my name the lights are cold, there’s no one left to love. I sold the fire for a crown of night, I drum, I cry, I don’t know who I am. Forget my name the contract is written in forgetting. What a mess… Why reach for the first smile? Why believe the spotlights were worth more than the fire you leave? He looks up. No more paper. Only the sky that does not shout. A voice comes down, almost a breath: “It is not mine to bring you back. You cut the tree for a paper star. So play. Let every hit be a name you lost, every chorus a letter that never left. You wanted to be an idol. Become the witness. The one who burned it all and still keeps time, so others don’t climb the same carousel.” He goes back to the nameless street, worn sticks against his chest. A kid of seventeen stares at him, the same eyes too wide for winter. He could speak, he could scream, show the folded paper in the dark. He only plays a slow rhythm, a lighthouse for the ones about to sign. The carousel turns somewhere else. He stays at the edge, and watches. Forget my name… the lights go out one by one. He picks up the sticks, no poster with his name. Just a beat that sounds like a heart that remembers too late.
