PHANTOM CURRENT

[Verse 1]
(Cold open, vocals before beat)
The third cup of chicory coffee, cold on the sill by the rebar grid.
Leo’s been up since Tuesday, tracing the cracks in his own eyelid.
He feels the phantom current run, the low-grade hum behind the bone,
a service line that ain’t his own, a circuit left to overload.
It’s the 4:17 AM static bleed from the sleeping transformers down the block,
the ghost of the shift whistle ticking in a busted kitchen clock.
The air tastes like ozone and rust, a Gary cocktail in the lung,
the feedback loop from where he’s from, the bitter taste on his own tongue.

[Chorus]
The city breathes that low-voltage drone,
same static load sittin' in the bone.
It ain't a fight when you're already home,
just you and the hum, livin' alone.

[Verse 2]
He remembers his father’s hands, the scarred-up knuckles and the grease,
how he'd come home from the sheet and tube mill lookin' for a piece of peace.
His mother’d watch him from the door, a silhouette in faded light,
and say, "He carries the whole damn mill home on his shoulders every night."
Now Leo's got that same deep sag, that ferrous weight behind the eyes,
a different engine, same design, the family heirloom of goodbyes.
The memory’s got a signal hiss, the playback's grainy and delayed,
an inherited voltage dip for which the price is always paid.

(Beat switches)

[Bridge]
This ain't no pain, it's just a frequency.
A signal ghost that lives inside of me.
I'm not the source, just the conduit wire,
lit by the city's low-burning fire.

[Chorus]
The city breathes that low-voltage drone,
same static load sittin' in the bone.
It ain't a fight when you're already home,
just you and the hum, livin' alone.

[Outro]
Yeah. Just the hum.
Livin' alone.