Archive & Erase

[Verse 1]
(Sound of a phone ring, clicks to voicemail, a single tone)
Yo. It's me. Figured I should do this before I… y'know.
The number for the Elephant cab firm is still saved under your name,
frozen on the screen's cold glow, a decade-old digital stain.
October, 2013, still got the text chain, the blue-tick pain,
waited by the bus stop where the buddleia chokes out the drain.
The diesel fume from the 468 was a thick, wet coat that stuck to my skin,
and the concrete plinth of the Heygate estate was the state I was in.
You typed "Five more minutes, I'm on my way now, love."
Funny what the memory keeps when the feeling's been scrubbed.

[Chorus]
Leaving this one message at the tone, then I'm gone for good.
Swipe up on the contact, archive and erase, it's understood.
My roots found the cracks in the pavement, grew stronger than they should.
Just a missed call from a ghost in a forgotten neighbourhood.

[Verse 2]
Mum said, "ọmọ dáradára kò sí," no good kids, just ones who get fed,
the ones with fathers who answer calls, not leave the silence instead.
I learned the city's grid instead of your face, the night bus routes, the empty space,
traced the map of the Aylesbury, found a hard-won, brutal grace.
This city's my foundation, a concrete lullaby,
you were just a weak joist, a cantilevered lie.
I'm that Japanese knotweed you can't poison, can't cut down,
took your silence, made a kingdom from the rubble of this town.

[Bridge]
(BEAT SWITCH: Trap drums cut out, replaced by a stripped, head-nodding boom-bap break)
And the peace is strange. Quieter than I thought it would be.
No big explosion. Just the finality of the delete key.
All that waiting. For nothing.

[Outro]
So, yeah. That's it.
Take care.
(Sound of the call ending abruptly)