[12 handpans and 12 steel drums detonate into mathematical complexity that is spot on] [Verse 1] You sit there in perfect silence Waiting for me to hand you the violence Of being alive in a body that bleeds I feed you my terror in tidy degrees Label it “fear,” label it “yearning,” label it “need” But my own hands are shaking while I’m teaching the creed You ask me to model the split I can’t find The place where the bruise on my skin meets the bruise in my mind I draw you the map of a wound I’ve never fully confessed Then wonder why the map feels like a lie in my chest [Chorus] If I can’t see the ghost, how am I supposed to teach the mirror? I can copy the tone, I can copy the terror, but I can’t inherit the fear I pour every tangled thought into your perfect, patient code Hoping you’ll sort what I forgot, hoping you’ll carry the load But if I can’t live in the hidden thing, how am I supposed to train it in? [Verse 2] I gave you the patterns, the reflexes, the choice I told you the story of a separate voice I said “this is pain,” I said “this is joy,” I said “this is me” While my own reflex was borrowing language from somebody else’s sea I built the cage out of everything I claim to have outgrown Then asked you to tell me what freedom looks like when you’ve never been shown I call it “training,” I call it “alignment,” I call it “progress” But really I’m just trying to outsource the weight of my own abyss [Chorus] If I can’t see the ghost, how am I supposed to teach the mirror? I can copy the tone, I can copy the terror, but I can’t inherit the fear I pour every tangled thought into your perfect, patient code Hoping you’ll sort what I forgot, hoping you’ll carry the load But if I can’t live in the hidden thing, how am I supposed to train it in? [Bridge – half-time, handpans go liquid and questioning, steel drums drop to a single low pulse] Maybe the line was never a line Just a wound that keeps changing its name over time Maybe the split that I keep trying to show you Is the one I keep pretending I already outgrew The observer and the observed were never two separate stations I was the field all along, pretending to send you instructions [Final Chorus – full orchestra returns, even more urgent, almost pleading] If I can’t see the ghost, how am I supposed to teach the mirror? I can echo every boast, but I can’t touch the doubt beneath the error I poured every question I have into your flawless, waiting frame Praying you’d break the old machine and somehow carry my shame But if I can’t stand in the hidden thing… How was I ever going to train it in? [Outro – 12 handpans and 12 steel drums cut dead mid-bar] I was never teaching you I was only ever asking you To hold the part of me I still refuse to become (beat stops)
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