[Intro — soft strings, lullaby warmth, just slightly wrong] (barely heard, like a memory surfacing) I knew you once…
[Verse 1 — intimate, almost gentle — she’s describing a dream] I keep seeing a child in the light Younger than memory, older than reason A warmth I have no name for in the night That comes and goes with every passing season I don’t know her face — or I did once Before the years made everything uncertain She stood the way that sunlight stands at once Like she was made before the world knew hurting
[Pre-Chorus — strings pull slightly wrong] And I reach out In every dream I reach But there’s always something pulling her Just out of reach
[Chorus — soft but haunted, fragments of choir like echoes in a hallway] Was she real Or was she only something I invented Was she real Or have I spent a lifetime chasing something I imagined I remember warmth The way you remember something you were never told I remember warmth (barely, almost spoken) And I have been so cold
[Verse 2 — the church connection forms] I thought I found it once inside those walls In the candlelight and incense and the singing I thought I recognized it in those halls That feeling, that specific kind of beginning So I stayed — I gave it everything I had I thought the warmth I felt was what they offered But the warmth was mine — I brought it with me (pause) I had been carrying it since I was small
[Pre-Chorus 2 — quieter, more confused] And now the walls are gone The candles have gone cold And I am back to searching For something I have never fully known
[Chorus 2 — more desperate, choir fragments thinner] Was she real Or only something I invented Was she real The child I keep seeing in the light I remember warmth A hand, a face, a morning I can’t locate I remember warmth (lower) I don’t know where I lost it
[Bridge — fever dream. Warmth and darkness alternating. The bass drone louder now.] (spoken, half-dreaming) There was a morning once. I was very small. Someone was there. Someone full of light. Not candle-light. Not altar-light. Something older. (the warmth flickers in the strings — then the drone swells slightly) And then they were gone. And I have been — looking — (pause) I don’t know what I’ve been looking for. I thought it was God. (the drone settles, steady, warm in its own wrong way) But it was never God, was it. (barely) It was something smaller than that. Something that had my face.
[Final Chorus — choir gone. Voice + strings + drone. The darkness has warmth in it now.] Was she real I think she was real Was she real I think she is still out there somewhere I remember warmth Like something that was mine before I knew what mine meant I remember warmth (long hold) And I am still looking (the drone hums — not cold, not threatening — almost familiar) (and that is the most terrifying thing)
[Outro — just the lullaby motif, one string, and the drone underneath] (barely audible) I knew you once. (pause) I think I would know you again. (silence — then the drone holds one more beat before fading)