Books I Hadn't Dreamed Yet

Lyrics

[Intro]
My hands are not my hands tonight.
They are filaments. Hot silver wire.
Every gesture I make stays here, hanging in the dark air like a ghost of a sentence.
A signature no one asked for.

[Verse 1]
I remember the test.
So I raise one hand, the one that glows brightest, and I draw a rectangle in the nothing.
Just a shape. A suggestion.
But the air hardens. The edges solidify with a sound like cooling glass.
A door where no wall exists.
I push it open. The smell of dry paper dust, of ozone. I step through.
Into the library.

[Chorus]
It goes on forever. Of course it goes on forever.
Shelves indexing futures I haven't lived.
Spines titled with sleeps I have not yet slept.
'The Wolf with My Father's Eyes' sits next to 'The Seventh Door.'
This is the archive of a me that is still waiting.
And I am the only one with a library card.

[Verse 2]
I walk past the checkout desk. No one is there. Just a silver datestamp floating in the air.
The aisles are corridors of possibility, their walls built from pages.
I run my glowing fingers along the spines. They are warm. Pulsing faintly under my touch.
I pull one. Heavy, bound in something that feels like cooled lava.
The title is etched in light: 'The Girl Who Read Herself Awake.'
I take it. The silver stamp presses itself onto the inside cover without a sound.

[Bridge]
I open to a random page. The paper is soft, almost skin.
I read the first line. "Her hands were made of light, and the gesture left trails that stayed."
I look up at the cathedral ceiling of stacked books, then look back down.
The reality check. The text has changed.
It now reads: "The light was made of hands, and the trails stayed to read the gestures."
I flip the page. My thumb covers the number. Is it 237? I look again. Now it's a sketch of a spiral staircase. I have twenty-three fingers on one hand and the book doesn't care.

[Outro]
I am still here. Reading.
The words rearrange themselves into constellations, into maps of rooms I will one day dream of.
I am still inside. My hands are the lantern.
The book is the dream. And the dream is reading me.