The Inventory of Absence

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Prompt / Lyrics

[Verse 1]
(Beat starts: Slow, deep 808 bass, sparse hi-hats, a single, melancholic piano chord ringing out every few bars.)
You wake up, the ceiling’s white, no name is in the light.
You search the mirror, but the image is a fragment, fractured by the night.
No ID, no print to match, just frozen smoke within the room.
Is this silence my own language or a haunting from the tomb?
I walk across the city, but I'm no part of this scene.
Every smile, every gesture, is a painful gap in between.
Whose hand is this that guides the compass of my soul?
A foreign architect who takes this labyrinth as his toll.

[Pre-Chorus]
(Beat slightly builds: a subtle, rising synth pad is introduced.)
Every door I try to open is sealed and locked away.
The code inside my mind is old, the world just stops its play.
I hear only an echo, stealing my name from sight.
I’m not who I’m supposed to be, just what I built up in the light.

[Chorus]
(Beat hits: Deeper bass, heavy reverb on the vocals, simple but powerful electronic melody line.)
Secret-child, living on the high wire.
I’m the fragment of a story set on fire.
I am the shadow standing waiting in the mist.
Until the mask falls down, and the truth cannot be missed.
I have to build myself, piece by piece, from sand and stone.
Foreign eyes, foreign place, I must be the unknown.

[Verse 2]
(Beat returns to sparse structure. Slightly distorted electronic voice sample in the background.)
They talk about their futures, about jobs and about grace.
I’m only searching for the starting line, the way back to my place.
Is my past life just a movie that I never got to see?
Or was the I from yesterday just cheap distraction surrounding me?
I collect the words that don't belong, put them back together wrong.
Try to catch my real face in the eyes where I don’t belong.
I copy all their postures, their stride, their gesture, cold and clear.
But when I breathe, the heavy air is pressing only near.

([Pre-Chorus]
(Beat slightly builds: the synth pad returns, louder this time.)

[Chorus]
(Full intensity.)

[Bridge]
(Beat drops to almost nothing: just the deep bass pulse and the main vocal line, very close and intimate.)
The night is long, the rain is washing all the tracks away.
Maybe all the yesterday was just a flaw, a bad display.
And the Must inside of me is louder than the Should and the Was.
I’m not lost, I’m only not yet clear of all the cause.

[Outro]
(Beat fades out slowly with heavy reverb on the last line. Theinitial melancholic piano chord returns, repeating softly until silence.)
I am the unknown...
I am the unknown...
(Whispered) I am...
(Piano chord rings)
...the secret.