White room Soft rain Glass breath No name Museum light Museum light They put my younger face behind a pane Called it fragile, called it saved Every bad year got a little white card With a date and a softer name Here is the summer I stopped asking Here is the dress I never wore Here is the voice I folded neatly When the room wanted less, not more I learned to stand so still for them Even my shadow looked polite But under the glass, under the dust Something kept touching the light I hear the floorboards breathing Under all this careful air If I am only preserved here Why do I still feel scared Do not hang me on the wall I am not done being alive Museum light, museum light Stop making ghosts look kind I kept the damage, not the cage I kept the wound, not the knife Do not hang me on the wall I am not done being alive Ah, ah Dust lifts from the frame Ah, ah My pulse outruns my name They made a quiet room for anger Temperature controlled and clean Hung my mouth beside the doorway So nobody heard it scream I watched the visitors admire How beautiful restraint can be They loved the shape of my survival More than the girl inside of me But every label starts to yellow Every velvet rope wears thin And all the lives I never lived Are tapping from within I hear the exit humming Somewhere past the marble stairs If I was made to stay here Why does the light point there Do not hang me on the wall I am not done being alive Museum light, museum light Stop making ghosts look kind I kept the damage, not the cage I kept the wound, not the knife Do not hang me on the wall I am not done being alive Maybe memory is holy Maybe memory can lie Maybe every room that keeps me Also teaches me to hide I am grateful for the proof That I made it through the night But proof is not a pulse And a label is not life So let the glass remember me Let the white rooms keep their names I will leave them what they wanted Not the girl who walked away Velvet rope Cold floor Exit sign Locked door Soft flash Still face Old hurt New shape No more No shrine My breath Is mine Do not hang me on the wall I am not done being alive Museum light, museum light Stop making ghosts look kind I kept the damage, not the cage I kept the wound, not the knife Do not hang me on the wall I am not done being alive Do not turn me into proof Of a pain I outgrew twice Let the frame keep what it stole I am walking out with my life White room Soft rain Glass breath My name Museum light I am leaving the frame
