Everything I Keep (Maleus)

[Verse 1 - full dark orchestral bed, cello low, voice dominant and cold] My name was never given — it was summoned from your fear. A rumor on a million tongues, across a thousand years. I keep the things that shouldn't bloom in all this endless night — the flower and the princess and the last, defiant light. [Chorus 1 - full arrangement, controlled, imperious] Everything I keep, I keep forever. No borrowed word crawls back the same as given. You called it theft. I called it mine to tether. You'll learn to love this dark you’re drowning in. [Verse 2 - orchestration beginning to thin, strings dropping away] You hold the blossom to your chest and call it what you will. The debt is not in petals, girl — the debt is in your will. I let one small, impossible thing glow in all my void. Of course I want the one who blooms where beauty is destroyed. [Chorus 2 - sparse, fewer instruments, voice more exposed] Everything I keep, I keep forever. No borrowed word crawls back the same as given. You called it theft. I called it mine to tether. You'll learn to love this dark you’re drowning in. [Bridge] Love me. I said love me. Not the light you lost, not the boy, not the stream. Love what you have become — love what feeds you. Love the dark that makes you more than you dreamed. [Chorus 2 - sparse, fewer instruments, voice more exposed] Everything I keep, I keep forever. No borrowed word crawls back the same as given. You called it theft. I called it mine to tether. You'll learn to love this dark you’re drowning in.