[INTRO — CLOSE MIC] Keep the cage shut. Daylight, I can almost pass for human. Almost. [VERSE 1] Got a thing in the basement / chewing through the load-bearing, every sentence leaves a bite mark / where the old fear is. Calm face, clean shirt / handshake, no warning, bass knocks once / something downstairs starts talking. No moonlight, lab coat / serum or mythology, one mic / nature needs another category. Half scholar, half accident / nobody documented properly, too articulate for cages / too unstable for taxonomy. Walk in quiet / leave dents in confidence, they brought opinions / left carrying consequences. I don't raise my voice / I lower everybody else's, one bar hits the room / now the silence needs a medic. Tried acting normal. Thirty seconds. New record. Then somebody said, “Be reasonable.” Record revoked. [HOOK] DON'T TAP THE GLASS. DON'T TEST THE LATCH. BASS HITS ONCE / THEN THE NIGHT BITES BACK. DAY FACE. DEAD CALM. ONE SNAP— WHO MADE THE WHOLE ROOM TAKE THREE STEPS BACK? THREE STEPS BACK. THREE STEPS BACK. Too late. Lock cracked. [VERSE 2] Built a staircase / out of doors they wouldn't open, climbed it backward / now I'm waving through the smoke at 'em. Wanted competition / till the word got uncomfortable, knife to wordplay / carved apart by homophones. Not literally. My lawyer's pulse came back. Sentences get buried / when I write right, punchline under punchline / trapdoor out of eyesight. Laugh at the first / three weeks later find four, whole verse got basement levels / under the ground floor. Notebook infected / margins started crawling, metaphors grew teeth / now the footnotes need muzzling. Meanings reproduce / side-notes keep spawning, page built an ecosystem. Rent's due Monday. Complicated follows me home, eats my food, answers my phone: “He can't come right now.” Honestly? Promote him. [HOOK] DON'T TAP THE GLASS. DON'T TEST THE LATCH. BASS HITS ONCE / THEN THE NIGHT BITES BACK. DAY FACE. DEAD CALM. ONE SNAP— WHO MADE THE WHOLE ROOM TAKE THREE STEPS BACK? THREE STEPS BACK. THREE STEPS BACK. [VERSE 3 — BUILD] Now the lock bends. Spent years hearing what I wasn't / what I'd never become, every limit they handed me / comes back missing a chunk. No costume, possession / no voice giving orders, trained in the ache / till the pain rearranged into agency. Same little flame / they were aiming to tame burned the leash off me, steady when aimed / now the frame can't contain what they made of me. Every bruise wore the shape / of the weight they laid on me, tags on my wrist became links / when I ripped the chain off me. Safe. Explainable. Plain. Containable? I bent every bar / till the bolts rained beneath me. Same ache / new shape, straight face / frame shakes, bass breaks / dead space— cage changes. [DOUBLE TIME — IRREGULAR] Chain bites back / past the break in the bar line, same ache / same cage / shape of the scar changed. Stayed late / page stained / rain hit the hard pane, brain ran laps while they laughed like the kid was a lost case. Cute. I was casing the framework. Weak beam / loose screw. Kick lands / both move. One tap— room tilts. One breath— floorboard screams. Tell me I don't listen? I heard the building leave. Made from the blame / and the names / and the weight they assigned me, turned every “can't” into cadence / kept one behind me. Wanted a tame little shape / they could safely define— came back, cage in my teeth / blueprint revised. Left half the old frame standing. Needed somewhere to hang the before picture. [ACCELERATION] Ate through the hinges / spit screws in the sink, ink on my knuckles / metal taste on my lip. Six links left / from the chain at my wrist, each one got thinner / every year I lived with it. Wait. Palm still remembers where the cold steel sat. Funny what the body keeps after the lock gives back. Glass sings. Pipe shakes. Bolt spins loose / floor shifts under both feet. Gate caves. Frame breaks. Same pain came back / wearing a name tag, chain they swore I'd drag / all the way to the grave. I wore it so long the links got thin. Then I made it jewelry. Click. Dead air. CAGE. Dust first. Then ceiling. [FINAL BURST — MAX SPEED] Frame caves inward / chain swings / black glass cracks, rain streaks backward / my face looking back. Same pain / same name / but the shape rearranged, same cage / same chain / now the ownership changed. Latch snaps / hand back / breath catches / room freezes, one click / twelve people suddenly believe in personal space. Three steps. Nobody screams. Good. Twelve pairs of soles scrape backward at once. Guess the room finally learned boundaries. [BREAK — HALFTIME] Face in the glass said, “Stay in your lane.” Broke the lane marker / made it a blade, carved out a path / through the same restraints. Came out dragging pieces of cage like a chain. Now when the room hears that click— they know. It isn't something inside me anymore. It's what survived. [FINAL HOOK] DON'T TAP THE GLASS. DON'T TEST THE LATCH. BASS HITS ONCE / THEN THE NIGHT BITES BACK. DAY FACE. DEAD CALM. ONE SNAP— WHO MADE THE WHOLE ROOM TAKE THREE STEPS BACK? THREE STEPS BACK. THREE STEPS BACK. Hear the bolts hit the floor— when the frame snaps. [OUTRO] The cage? Keep it. Mount it on the wall. I outgrew it.
