Before I desapeared

[Intro: solo double bass, bowed, intimate] [Verse 1] My backpack had been ready for a long, long time, like keeping a way out in case I couldn't go on. The city was still awake, I pretended I was fine, nodding at the right moments so I wouldn't have to explain. [Verse 2] The elevator lights seemed to ask me if there was anything left still worth fighting for. And I looked down, with nothing I could say, like someone arriving far too late to their own darkness. [Verse 3] No goodbyes, no final truth, just the sound of my footsteps leaving it all behind. I had already lost myself before I disappeared, before I became someone I never wanted to see. With the streets still wet, the night brushing my skin, and all the words I never said left silent on the platform. [Verse 4] A humming machine, bad coffee and blue light, the station half-empty, no one looking my way. My reflection in the window could have been anyone, someone slowly running away not knowing where they'd end up. And I thought that sometimes surviving meant daring to leave instead of staying there. [Verse 5] It wasn't courage, or the will to carry on, it was fear of staying and never trying again. [Chorus] I left before I disappeared, before the silence swallowed me whole and made me just like him. [Bridge] With the ad screens dark, the city washed in gray, all the lives I never lived pushing me to keep going. Maybe tomorrow I'll regret it, maybe I'll want to go back, but for the first time in years I felt the air fill my lungs. [Final Chorus] I left before I disappeared, with the sunrise at my back, breaking across the glass as the train pulled away. And even if I found nothing, even if it all went wrong, at least that dawn I heard myself breathe again. [Outro: instrumental, soft double bass and electric guitar, fade out] [End]