Which Self Is the Costume

Lyrics

Found this on an island that isn't sure of its own name.
Wrapped in oilcloth.
Heavy with rain and ink.
Your other life, Akira.

The paper still smells of it.
Not the sea salt out here, but Tokyo.
1:47 a.m. in a dressing room under the stage.
Rice powder and sweat, a ghost of incense.
The clack of geta on a stone floor, echoing.
The last of the character washing away.
Or the first of you coming back.

I can picture the discipline.
The small mirror sewn inside your kimono sleeve, a secret glance.
Checking the line of your neck, the fall of your hand.
Years spent learning a woman's walk, a lover's sigh.
Perfecting the art of being someone else, so completely...
that maybe the bones forget who they were meant to be.

And you came here, to the edge of the map.
A piece of land caught between two flags.
And you left this question in the cold gray dirt.
Action Hero Akira...
Which self is the costume?
This body, this island... who signs the treaty?

But in here... in these pages...
Another man breathes.
Sketches of fight scenes in the margins.
Fists instead of fans.
A hero's jawline drawn over and over.
A manifesto written in the dark after the final curtain,
a secret you carried under the silk and the paint.
The strength you had to hide to be called beautiful.

Did you stand on this cliff, Akira?
Let the wind from Siberia strip the powder from your skin?
Did you shout the hero's lines into the fog?
This island doesn't know if it's Japan or Russia.
And you... you stood on it and maybe for a second,
you didn't have to know either.
You could just be both.

Now there's just the wind.
And this book in my hands.
Your two names, fighting for the same page.
Which self is the costume?