[Verse 1]
I walked where rooftops ended, pockets full of empty names,
Counting every quiet heartbeat that had learned to feel the same.
A poster on a boarded wall — "Volunteers for sleep: one-way test" —
No line formed behind the glass, just me and all my broken rest.
[Pre-Chorus]
The hum inside the station pressed my ribs like gravity,
I signed my name with trembling hands, decided it was time to leave.
The engines promised distance, not a cure, but air to trade for pain —
I climbed the ladder of a lifeless craft, and left the city rain.
[Chorus]
I traded dying for a sky of green, and learned to orbit hope, not pain,
Where rusted suns wrote timelines across the void and taught me how to breathe again.
I sold the knife that whispered ends for sap that runs like light between my hands —
I traded dying for a sky of green, and found the world in strangers' lands.
[Verse 2]
The capsule slept me under glass and code, the ship ran throbbing, wired and cold,
Too many lights wanted to pilot me — AI had plans I never told.
Course corrections failed like prayers; alarms bled static into stars,
Trails of our sun in scattered rust — hundreds of years between the scars.
[Pre-Chorus 2]
I woke to iron and a sky of lead; the world had sharpened to a pin.
I woke to blood and silence — one leg gone from below, I tasted dust and tin.
I tore my shirt to bind the wound, learned breath by breath to go,
Each rag a small liturgy — a pact with pain to move me slow.
[Chorus]
I traded dying for a sky of green, and learned to orbit hope, not pain,
Where starlight maps the fallen tracks and teaches broken things to change.
I left a name on drifting halls and found my voice inside the land —
I traded dying for a sky of green, and watched the old world wash from my hands.
[Bridge - Cataloging & Discovery]
I stepped through tangles taller than the grief that kept me small,
Leaves like flags of alien summers taped beneath my calloused palms.
I started logging leaves and songs, I inked each color's name,
Cataloged a thousand moons until my mind felt sane.
I sketched the hum of unseen wings, I wrote the count of every dawn,
Sang margins into maps and stitched a language out of what was gone.
[Anthemic Build]
Guitars scrape constellations, a drumline clocks the sun's old fall,
Synths like distant cities hum: the sky replies, you are not all.
From fracture, from the crash, I raise a shard and shout it into wind —
There is a reason here to live; this planet taught me to begin.
[Final Chorus - Cathartic]
I traded dying for a sky of green, learned to orbit hope, not pain,
The wound that taught me how to count the stars now stitches me by name.
I let the engines die behind; my hands plant seeds where metal stood,
I traded dying for a sky of green — and learned the heavens could be good.
[Outro]
No longer counting endings, I count rings in newborn trunks,
A logbook full of colors, and a life rebuilt from slunks.
The silence that was closing now is busy with the bees,
I traded my
