[Intro] [Stark Ominous Wooden Foot Stomp] [Isolated Raw Resonator Guitar Strike] [UltraCloseMic] I stopped counting winters somewhere around three hundred. People kept changing the calendars. It started to feel sarcastic. [Verse 1] [MelodicVoice] [Rhythmic Slide Guitar Entry] I knew a man who swore the world would end by spring. That was nine worlds ago, depending what you mean. I've watched the maps change colors, watched the colors change their names. Everybody plants a flag. Nobody's flag remains. I had a house beside a river. The river isn't there. There's a city where I buried someone's ribbon in her hair. [Pre-Chorus] [LoFi Telephone Filter] Don't ask me what year it was. After a while, years get small. [Chorus] [SoulfulVoice] [Explosive Glitch Hop Blues Groove] I've been kicking the centuries down the road, one after another, watching them go. Kings become portraits. Portraits become dust. Every generation says, "Remember us." I do. God, I do. I've been kicking the centuries down the road. [Verse 2] [MelodicVoice] [Lean Propulsive Rhythm] I learned six dead languages when none of them were dead. I still dream in one of them when someone's in my bed. They tell me we're the future. I've heard that one before. The future always enters through an ordinary door. Once I crossed an ocean and thought I'd reached the edge. Now people cross above it, eating dinner at thirty thousand feet. [Single Foot Stomp] I still don't like flying. [Pre-Chorus] [Electronic Tension Building] You'd think forever would make you fearless. It mostly makes you good at goodbye. [Chorus] [SoulfulVoice] [Full Glitch Hop Blues Groove] I've been kicking the centuries down the road, one after another, watching them go. Empires become chapters. Cathedrals lose their bells. I've lived through several heavens and almost as many hells. I remember them. Somebody should. I've been kicking the centuries down the road. [Bridge] [UltraCloseMic] [All Instruments Stop] Here's the part nobody asks. I don't remember every face. Sometimes I find a name written in my own handwriting [MicroSilence] and feel my heart break for someone I can't place. [LongPause] That's worse than losing them. [Final Chorus] [SoulfulVoice] [Heavy Glitch Blues Groove] [Electronic Layers Progressively Disintegrate] So I'll keep kicking the centuries down the road, carrying people nobody knows. Not because I'm chosen. Not because I'm wise. I'm just the one still standing when everybody dies. And someday— if someday ever comes— I'd like to meet somebody older than me. Sit down somewhere quiet. Not explain a thing. And ask— [All Electronic Elements Cut] [Only Foot Stomp and Resonator] "Do you remember when the world was young?" [Outro] [UltraCloseMic] [Single Foot Stomp] They'd probably laugh. [LongPause] So would I. [Final Resonator String Decays] [AbsoluteSilence]
