[INTRO — distant choir, reversed piano, a clock ticking underwater]

At 4:17, the birds stopped singing.
Every window turned away.
And somewhere underneath the city,
something called me by a name
I hadn’t heard in years.

I tried to answer.

But my voice
was gone.

[VERSE 1 — delicate piano, haunting vocal]

There was frost upon the ceiling,
there were flowers in the hall.
Every mirror held the room
but never held me there at all.

Seven candles on the table
burned beneath the pouring rain.
And the house kept rearranging
all the hallways I had named.

I found footprints in the garden
leading upward through the sky.
They were small enough for children.

None of them came back down.

[PRE-CHORUS — strings slowly rising]

Then the radio began to whisper
in a language made of sleep.

Every voice was saying something
that I almost could believe.

And the hands upon the clock
turned beneath the frozen sea.

I stood there in the silence,
waiting for it to remember me.

[CHORUS — enormous cinematic drums, aching strings, ghostly harmonies]

THE WORLD FORGOT TO DREAM,
and I disappeared between
all the lives I might have lived
and the places I had been.

There are oceans in the ceiling,
there are angels in the walls.
There’s a door beneath the staircase
where the last light goes to fall.

THE WORLD FORGOT TO DREAM,
and nothing remembers me.

Not the sky above the rooftops,
not the ground beneath my feet.

I keep calling through the darkness,
but the dark won’t answer me.

[POST-CHORUS — distant, almost wordless choir]

Oh-oh, can you hear me?
Oh-oh, can you hear me?

I am still here.

I think.

[VERSE 2 — low strings, distant mechanical pulse]

At the station, all the passengers
were holding empty frames.
Every train arrived at midnight.
Every platform bore my name.

There was a little girl in silver
selling shadows in the rain.
She looked at me as if she’d seen me
in another life, another place.

She handed me a photograph
of a house beneath the sea.

Every window held a candle.
Someone stood where I should be.

I asked her who it was.

She turned the picture over.

There was nothing written there.

[PRE-CHORUS 2 — growing dread]

I asked her where the house was.

She said, “You used to know.”

Then she walked into the rainfall
and became the falling snow.

I tried to follow after her.

But I couldn’t make my body go.

[CHORUS — wider, heavier, more desperate]

THE WORLD FORGOT TO DREAM,
and I disappeared between
all the lives I might have lived
and the places I had been.

There are oceans in the ceiling,
there are angels in the walls.
There’s a door beneath the staircase
where the last light goes to fall.

THE WORLD FORGOT TO DREAM,
and nothing remembers me.

Not the sky above the rooftops,
not the ground beneath my feet.

I keep calling through the darkness,
but the dark won’t answer me.

[BRIDGE — everything cuts except a distant choir]

I found the house beneath the water.
I found the garden made of glass.

I found a thousand little doorways
to a thousand different pasts.

Behind one, I heard my mother
singing softly in the kitchen.

Behind another, someone loved me
without needing a reason.

I pressed my hands against the doorways.
I begged them to let me through.

But the memories kept moving
like a film I couldn’t enter,
like a life that wasn’t mine
though I remembered every room.

And behind the final doorway,
there was nothing there at all.

Just a room without a ceiling
and a staircase without walls.

I waited for a voice to find me.

I waited for the floor.

I waited until waiting
was the only thing I knew.

[BUILD — slow strings, trembling choir, distant thunder]

I remember the garden.

I remember the rain.

I remember being someone
before I lost my name.

I remember all the doorways.
I remember every dream.

But I can’t remember waking.

And no one remembers me.

[FINAL CHORUS — colossal orchestra, devastating vocals]

THE WORLD FORGOT TO DREAM,
and the silence swallowed me.

All the lives I might have lived
are buried underneath.

Let the oceans take the ceiling.
Let the angels leave the walls.
Let the house sink even deeper.
Let there be no light at all.

THE WORLD FORGOT TO DREAM.
I can feel the ending near.

I have spent so long remembering
a world that isn’t here.

And if someone finds this doorway,
if someone hears me disappear—

Please don’t say that I was dreaming.

I was here.

I was here.

[OUTRO — one piano note, distant water]

At 4:17,
the birds began to sing.

The windows turned toward morning.
The clocks resumed their little rings.

The city filled with footsteps.
The trains returned on time.

The world went on without me.

As if it always had.

And somewhere underneath the water,
in a house without a door,

a photograph lay face down
upon the ocean floor.

The picture slowly faded.

The paper came apart.

And no one ever found it.

No one ever knew
who stood inside the frame.

[The water goes silent.]

[No final note.]

[End.]