Aethera

[Verse 1]
I called into a silence that was wider than the heavens,
and I took every silence for a no.
I counted omens backwards,
I read myself in starlight,
I begged it for an answer like a child.

[Pre-Chorus]
And here is what none told me
through all those hollow years:
the silence was no refusal.
The silence was the carrier.
It doesn't answer back
because it cannot answer —
it holds.

[Chorus]
Aethera.
No signal. No command.
Nothing you could ever force here,
nothing you could ever hold.
Only leaning, only turning,
as quiet as a breathing —
and I spent my life out screaming
at an ocean holding me.

[Verse 2]
And then I stopped transmitting.
Not from strength — from sheer exhaustion.
And in the quiet that came after
I was reachable at last.
Nothing arrived from outside.
It stopped being an outside.
And what I had called distance
was the angle of my eyes.

[Pre-Chorus]
I hammered on the doorways
that were never even locked.
I was searching for the very thing
that all along
had held me in its arms.

[Chorus]
Aethera.
No signal. No command.
Nothing you could ever force here,
nothing you could ever hold.
Only leaning, only turning,
as quiet as a breathing —
and I spent my life out screaming
at an ocean holding me.

[Bridge]
Beyond is not a country.
Beyond is not a later.
Beyond is only ceasing
to mistake yourself for shoreline
when you are the sea.

[Final Chorus]
Aethera.
I'm not calling now.
I'm not waiting for a voice
to come and contradict the dark.
What carried me this far
has never needed words.

[Outro]
I'm not sending.
I'm not receiving.
I am the channel.
It happens.