The Book I Haven't Written

Lyrics

[Intro]
They sat across a table made of polished silver.
Their faces were pages of static, their language a murmur behind rain.
Just vowels, almost a name.
Almost mine.

[Verse 1]
I leaned in, trying to catch a single thread of sense.
The sound was liquid, a script flowing just past my ear.
My own tongue felt heavy, a silver weight.
I focused all my attention on my mouth, on the shape of two words.
I mouthed it first, then whispered it: “Slow down.”

[Chorus]
And the room held its breath.
The rain on the glass stopped.
Suddenly every word was clear, every syllable a perfect, cut crystal.
They were telling me the plot of a book.
A book I haven't written yet.
About a man who builds an infinite hotel, looking for the one room that contains the blueprints for his own heart.

[Verse 2]
One of them, whose face was now a mirror, pushed the manuscript across the silver table.
The leather was warm. No title.
I opened to a random page. The text described my hand opening the book.
I tried the check. I held up my palm.
I counted my fingers, and they were five and normal.
I looked back at the page, then at my hand again.
The words on the page were now 'The fingers were five and normal.'
The page was right. The world was wrong.

[Chorus]
And their voices, so clear now, they were telling me the plot.
A book I haven't written yet.
About a man who builds an infinite hotel, looking for the one room that contains the blueprints for his own heart.
He finds it. The room is empty except for a man who looks just like him, drawing the blueprints.

[Bridge]
Their voices became my voice.
I was telling them the story now.
The character walks corridors that echo his own thoughts back at him.
He reads the graffiti on the walls and realizes it’s his own diary from the future.
He is the architect and the prisoner.
The hotel is the book. The book is the dream.

[Outro]
They nodded, their mirrored faces showing me, writing.
The plot ends when the ink runs out.
They dissolved back into static, into the sound of rain.
The silver table was a blank page.
And in my hand, I found a pen.