There was a house at the edge of my heartbeat,

Wallpaper peeling like the things I never said.

I heard footsteps drag across the floorboards

Mine, but from a version of me already dead.

He sat crooked at the table, chewing on the silence,

Fingers drumming like he knew I’d come.

Old me had a habit of loading excuses

called them “warnings” when he cocked the gun.

I said “Listen, man… I carried you too long,”

But he only grinned with my own damn mouth.

He said “People don’t change, they just shift their pain

from the attic to the basement in the house.”

But I lit that place with the matches in my chest,

Watched memories climb up the walls like smoke.

Every fear that ever learned my name

Coughed and choked and turned to ghosts.

I walked away with my shadow screaming,

But shadows can’t follow where the fire glows.

Yeah, I burned the version of myself that night

That swore he’d never let me grow.

He lunged first, old me always had bad timing.

Tried to drag me back into the chair we both carved

Out of guilt, overthinking, and a miming.

We wrestled through the hallway of unresolved years,

Picture frames falling like witnesses.

He said “You can’t kill me, I’m your reflection,”

I said “Nah… you’re my sickness.”

I whispered, “It’s not murder if he begged for it,”

As he sank into the floor like an echo undone.

The soul’s a crime scene with no police,

And self-defense is just rebirth when the story’s spun.

So I lit that place with the matches in my chest,

Watched the memories climb up the walls like smoke.

Every fear that ever learned my name

Coughed and choked and turned to ghosts.

I walked away with my shadow screaming,

But shadows can’t follow where the fire glows.

Yeah, I burned the version of myself that night

That swore he’d never let me grow.

I’m runnin’, runnin’, runnin’

From the boy who I used to be.

But he ain’t dyin’, dyin’, dyin’

He’s just fallin’ out of me.

And I’m hummin’, hummin’, hummin’

A requiem under my breath,

For the kid who clung to sinking ships

And called the water “home,” not “death.”

I lit that place with the matches in my chest,

Didn’t wait to see the flames burn out.

If freedom’s a crime scene, well then arrest me

I confessed to every doubt.

I walked away with a cleaner heartbeat,

No ghosts left riding on my lungs.

If you want the story straight, I’ll tell it:

Reinvention’s just the war I won.

If you see me comin’ down your old street…

Keep walkin’.

That ain’t me no more.

That’s just the smoke from the fire I started

When I decided to change everything.