between a rocky and a slim shady

Lyrics

[Male spoken word soft poetic and humble voice] [slow pacing] [fragile breath] [almost whispering] The first night insomnia kissed me it tasted like my own voice. Like every word I had swallowed whole coming back warm from the dark with nowhere left to hide. Infatuated… with non-factual dreams. Backdraft thoughts in the black of my sleep. Cracks in the ceiling keep speaking in grief like the room learnt my language from the way that I breathe. [Male: a rough vocal with a rasp of US spoken word rap] [calm] [emotionless delivery] I learnt from your silence. You call it exhaustion. I call it an open door. You never lost sleep. You started handing it over. [Male spoken word soft poetic and humble voice] [tired] [emotionally cracked] Poor me. Poor me. Pour me a whiskey. Watch the glass catch a face that looks less like me every week. Sip slow. Self-sabotage neat. Like the burn in my throat might bargain for sleep. [Male: a rough vocal with a rasp of US spoken word rap] [closer microphone] [calm predator energy] I don’t bargain. I feed. In the split between blink and belief. Between your clenched jaw and your tongue in your teeth. I know every wound you renamed that’s just me. Because pain always tells the truth before people speak. [Male spoken word soft poetic and humble voice] [unsettled breathing] You make the ceiling breathe. You make the shadows lean. You make old conversations re-enter the room and sit where my sleep should have been. One thought becomes three. Three become thirty. And suddenly 2AM feels louder than a funeral. [Male: a rough vocal with a rasp of US spoken word rap] [slow] [calculated] Because your mind was never a bedroom. It was storage. And every hurt you boxed up still remembers who ignored it. You buried things alive. I just taught them how to scratch. [Male spoken word soft poetic and humble voice] [very quiet] You sound like me. [Male: a rough vocal with a rasp of US spoken word rap] [intimate] [deep closeness] Because I am. I was born the first night you swallowed a scream because somebody taught you survival looked cleaner when nobody heard it. I was there when love felt borrowed. When safety felt temporary. When your nervous system learnt panic before your mouth learnt language. I did not enter your life. I was built there. [Male spoken word soft poetic and humble voice] [emotion restrained] Then why do you stay? [Male: a rough vocal with a rasp of US spoken word rap] [soft menace] Because everybody else didn’t. People leave. I don’t. Lovers left. Friends faded. Faith folded. But I sat at the side of your bed like a loyal disease wearing your skin like it belonged to me. [Male spoken word soft poetic and humble voice] [firmer tone] No. You stayed because fear needs feeding. Because trauma needs an audience. Because pain loves an echo. And you learnt my voice well enough to make my own thoughts sound like a weapon. You didn’t stay because you loved me. You stayed because I was easier to haunt than lose. [Male: a rough vocal with a rasp of US spoken word rap] You still need me. [Male spoken word soft poetic and humble voice] [stronger delivery] Maybe. But every night you dragged me through hell you made one mistake. You thought because I was shaking I was breaking. You thought because I was quiet I was weak. You thought because I was drowning I hadn’t learnt how to breathe underneath. [Male: a rough vocal with a rasp of US spoken word rap] [uncertain] You can’t survive me. [Male spoken word soft poetic and humble voice] [steady] [controlled] [empowered ending] No. But I can survive the man you made me meet. So tonight when you crawl back through the cracks like you always do, come softly. Because the voice you’ve been using to destroy me finally realised it doesn’t live in my head. It lives in my mouth. And this time I’m fucking speaking back.