If people didn’t remind me what I was like between
the ages of ten and nineteen,
I wouldn’t remember it. These raps is scrapbooks of what the medicine left to me. Mosaics of memories.
Head full of white noise and run-on sentences.
Boiling over in conversations of kettle hiss
and awkward silences. Hear the tension drip
slightly behind schedule to the rhythm of metal clicks
of my train of thought switchin tracks.
Forgot what I was sayin as I said it, and my friends had to spit it back.
Those pills ain’t help me focus.
Got suicidal when I was dopesick. Talkin like my throat slit. Palms sweaty, dose lit me like a coke hit.
Came down and told my moms I was better off pulseless. She’d cry, and I wouldn’t feel it.
Leave her weeping by herself, echoing off the paintings in the house.
Came home cottonmouthed, last bit of empathy crawlin out.

[instrumental break]

The family tapestry is braided with pills.
Man, my bloodline’s crazy for real.
All this medicine taken just to get CLOSE to how capable feels,
so that we never collapse under the weight of our bills.
Working at being happy’s like puttin blades through a shield.
Suicide letter rough drafts, changin the date on my will.
Taking the homies’ concerned looks like nails to the heel.
The brain a biohazard. My expression wearin the seal.
Angels takin the wheel. Demons giving advice.
Knuckles fat from breakin down and then rebuildin my life.
So calm and levelheaded, friends would never suspect
til the day that they saw the shadow of a belt on my neck.
I had moms prayin in her nightmares,
wakin up with wet eyes rushin to my room makin sure I was still right there
with a chest full of tight air. She gave me the world,
and I was too sick to give anything back except for white hair.

[instrumental break]

They told me it was medicine in this bag, but I know I [“got speed”]

Accepted my burden then I shoulder pressed it.
Know the ledges well I walk heel to toe against em.
Decoded what I used to quote, and it's coated in codependence.
Way before I had started rhyming, I wrote this ending.
My broken edges unraveling in the smoking session.
These bottles were loaded weapons, but I’m over threatening
I used to eat dope for breakfast and skip my lunches.
My eyes vacant--each day was a different nothing.
Losin weight on my diet of limitless pills.
In the mirror dipping the reel, fishing for feels,
In the kitchen rinsing the gills, sizzlin kills.
Three-star Michelin meals, written to fill
Riding lightening outta sunspot til my lungs locked.
Walgreens for the drug drop, pulse hit the uprock
With my mother's scrips wrinkled in my other fist
Took another fix like a ton of bricks, even when I wasn't sick