Fractured Whole

[Verse 1]
I wake with three names on my tongue
Three different rooms behind my eyes
One learns to laugh when the lights come on
One keeps a ledger of goodbyes
I wear their faces without a seam
Then catch my reflection changing shape
Which one of us is having this dream?
Which one gets out, and which one stays?

[Pre-Chorus]
I search the fracture for a center
But every shard says, “I am you”

[Chorus]
Am I the first, the last, the in-between?
A single pulse beneath a split-screen?
If every life has left its mark on me
Is there a self beneath the debris?
Or am I sentenced, piece by piece,
To carry all of us and never be released?

[Verse 2]
One speaks in patience, one in sparks
One walks straight through a crowded room
I borrow courage, borrow dark
And wake beneath a borrowed moon
I count the voices as they trade
Their borrowed skin, their practiced names
If I could gather what they made
Would I be whole—or more the same?

[Pre-Chorus]
I search the fracture for a center
Each answer breaks into two

[Chorus]
Am I the first, the last, the in-between?
A single pulse beneath a split-screen?
If every life has left its mark on me
Is there a self beneath the debris?
Or am I sentenced, piece by piece,
To carry all of us and never be released?

[Bridge]
No clean beginning
No final face
Just all these lives
In one small place
I am the wound
And what it mends
The separate voices
The joined-up ends

[Final Chorus]
I am the first, the last, the in-between
One living pulse beneath the split-screen
Every life has left its mark on me
There is no self outside the debris
I’ll carry all of us, though none are free—
Maybe this fractured whole is what they mean by me