[VERSE 1] The city still functions the way a mouth can smile after the tooth is gone. Screens glow like altar candles; everyone’s praying to be seen by something that doesn’t love them. You can hear the hunger in polite voices—“Just checking in”, “Hope you’re well”— phrases folded like napkins over an empty plate. We keep the lights on so we don’t have to admit what’s missing. We keep the music loud so the silence doesn’t testify. A thousand small conveniences, each one a tiny surrender, until your life feels like a receipt you didn’t agree to sign. [REFRAIN] It doesn’t fall in one day. It thins. It frays. It learns to look normal. [VERSE 2] Watch how people apologize now: not for harm, for inconvenience. Watch how we trade attention like contraband, five seconds at a time. Watch how kindness gets routed through branding, how grief has to be “relatable” to earn a chair at the table. The streets are clean in the rich parts. The dirt moved indoors. It lives in lungs, in sleep, in the way children flinch at raised voices even when nobody’s yelling. Somewhere a hospital corridor hums. Somewhere a phone keeps ringing. Somewhere a person is being translated into “case”, “metric”, “outcome” until their name feels like a rumor. [REFRAIN] It doesn’t fall in one day. It thins. It frays. It learns to look normal. [VERSE 3] We call it progress when a human is replaced by a menu. We call it efficiency when nobody has to look you in the eye. We call it freedom when the cage is invisible and you decorate it yourself so it feels like choice. You can feel the era in the way people don’t touch anymore. Hands in pockets. Eyes on exits. Everyone carrying a private weather system and smiling like it’s sunny. We are over-informed and under-held. We have instructions for everything except how to stay soft without being taken apart. So we harden. We optimize. We joke. We become fluent in coping. [BRIDGE] I miss when “home” meant a door that opened to a person, not a room where you collapse alone and the algorithm keeps you company. I miss when anger had a target. Now it’s atmospheric. Now it’s everywhere. Now it’s the air. [FINAL REFRAIN] It doesn’t fall in one day. It thins. It frays. It learns to look normal. And one morning you wake up and the world is still standing— but it’s standing like a stranger.
