The Door Behind My Ribs

Lyrics

[Intro]
There's a catch in the breath.
A seam in the skin just under the sternum.
Not a scar. A hinge.

[Verse 1]
I traced it with a finger that didn't feel like my own.
Silver, cold like a key left in the frost.
It wasn't pain, just a question humming in the bone.
A small door, latched from the inside.
I thought, "Open," and the latch clicked.
The sound was inside my skull, not in the room.
The room itself was just a silver mirror of the room.

[Chorus]
And I stepped through the door behind my ribs.
Became the guest in the house of my own blood.
The hallways were veins, the ceiling was breath.
And in the center, the heart. A warm red sun.
My own sun. I held up a hand and thought "dim," and the light softened to dusk.
I thought "brighten," and the chamber filled with day.

[Verse 2]
The lungs to the left were a library, each rib a shelf.
The books were bound in quiet exhalations.
Stairs spiraled down the spine to rooms I hadn't built yet.
I walked past the liver, a silent, dark hotel named "Wednesday."
The concierge was a shadow wearing my father's hat, but he didn't look up.
Every surface reflected another entrance, another door into the same space.
I was the labyrinth and the one walking it.

[Chorus]
Stepping through the door behind my ribs.
I am the guest in the house of my own blood.
The architecture is breath, the acoustics are a pulse.
And in the center, my heart. A captured, patient sun.
I held up my hand and thought "dim," and the light bled into violet.
I thought "brighten," and the walls sang with heat.

[Bridge]
This has to be it. The awareness.
I held my hand to the sun to check the time on its skin.
I counted the fingers on my right hand. There were six, and one was made of smoke.
I counted again, the smoke-finger was gone, but the thumb had become a key.
The sun-heart pulsed, not with a beat, but with a word. My name, spoken backwards.
The door I came through is gone. Now it's a mirror.
And the man reflected inside me isn't me. He's smiling.

[Outro]
He gestures for me to brighten the sun.
So I do.
My intention, but not my choice.
The red light washes over everything.
The chamber is the sun. I am the chamber.
The pulse is the light. The light is the pulse.