[INTRO – almost spoken, fragile] At first it was the silence that learned my name. Then silence became the only guest who never left the frame. Somewhere alone and waiting my mind began to build a house from every fear and called the empty rooms home. [VERSE 1] I used to hear a stranger laugh and wonder what they knew. I used to see a crowded room and think that I could enter too. I reached for someone’s hand believing hands would reach for mine. Each unanswered invitation taught the heart to fall in line. The days grew long, the nights grew wide. The world kept turning without me. Every little social thread became another thing to doubt and dread. [PRE-CHORUS] I don’t know when it happened. I cannot mark the start. I only know a warning sounded every time I opened up my heart. [CHORUS] There’s a stranger in the mirror wearing all my old expressions. There’s a war inside the nervous system, a thousand false impressions. I no longer know if I am wanted. I no longer know if I belong. I’ve been alone so long that being loved feels somehow wrong. I want somebody near me— God, I want somebody there— yet the mind keeps finding danger in the simple act of someone caring. I am not made of stone. I am not beyond repair. I am only learning how to live inside a world that doesn’t seem to care... [VERSE 2] The brain became a watchman with a finger on the trigger, searching every face for danger, making every shadow bigger. It learned to read rejection in the spaces between words, to hear contempt in silence, to expect the worst from being heard. Memory plays its dirty tricks: it keeps the wounds and drops the good. It tells me I was never wanted though I know that isn’t the truth. I cancel plans before they’re made. I turn away before they leave. I call it independence, but there’s a quieter truth beneath the grief. [PRE-CHORUS 2] The longer I go without it, the harder every doorway seems. I crave the warmth of human contact yet flinch when someone reaches for me. [CHORUS] There’s a stranger in the mirror wearing all my old expressions. There’s a war inside the nervous system, a thousand false impressions. I no longer know if I am wanted. I no longer know if I belong. I’ve been alone so long that being loved feels somehow wrong. I want somebody near me— God, I want somebody there— yet the mind keeps finding danger in the simple act of someone caring. I am not made of stone. I am not beyond repair. I am only learning how to live inside a world that doesn’t feel fair! [BRIDGE – piano alone, almost a confession] Do you know what happens when nobody says your name? You stop expecting to be noticed. You stop expecting someone to come. You stop telling people stories because there’s no one asking why. You stop imagining a future with another person by your side. You lose the little things that made you feel like someone in the world— the spontaneous conversation, the comfort of a hand to hold, the ordinary feeling that somebody wants you home. And one day somebody asks you why you will not let them in. You cannot explain the distance between the person you were and what you’ve become within. [SPOKEN BREAK] I did not choose the distance. I adapted. I did not stop needing people. I only stopped believing that needing them would ever make a difference. And the saddest thing… the saddest thing is that I still look for you in every room. [FINAL CHORUS – fuller, still restrained] There’s a stranger in the mirror, but I remember who was there before the walls became my shelter, before I learned to live without a prayer. I still want to be somebody’s first thought when the daylight comes. I still want to hear somebody say they missed me when I was gone. I want to laugh without suspicion, speak without defense, feel a little kindness without searching for its consequence. I am more than my defenses, more than all these empty years. There is someone underneath this who still wants to disappear into the warmth of being wanted, into the safety of a friend. I’m not asking for forever. Just don’t let the silence win again. [OUTRO – soft piano, exhausted] At first it was the silence that hurt me when it came. Now I leave the door unlocked and hope somebody wanders in... Somewhere in the quiet, beneath the years of disrepair, a heart is still remembering what it felt like to know somebody cared. [Final note fades into silence]
