Halsey: “This is how I originally wrote it. One of those that starts as a poem and then begs to be a song. I posted a fragment of this on tumblr a while back, but here’s the initial piece in its entirety 🤍”

I spent years becoming cool,
and in one single second
you can make a decade of my efforts disappear.
I’m just waiting at the bar
and you rip open all my scars
by saying something like
“Didn’t know you were here…”

Since I was just a fragile girl
doing my makeup on the floor,
before a full length mirror that I bought
from some consignment store,
I filled my head with cinematics
where I stumble upon men.
Take them to the edge of greatness,
find a new one,
start again.

I always knew I was a martyr
and that Jesus was one too,
but I was built from special pieces
that I learned how to unscrew
so I can always reassemble
to fit perfectly for you
or anybody that decides
that I’m of use.

Lonely is the muse.

So where do I go in the process?
When I’m just an apparatus?
I’ve inspired platinum records
I’ve earned platinum airline status
I mined a couple diamonds
from the stories in my head,
but I’m reduced to just a body
here in someone else’s bed.

I wish that I was better
for the kids who emulate.
But they should really all know better
than to take the fucking bait
that I’ve been dangling from this building
with my goosebumps, in the cold.
Cause I am nothing but a story
for a man until I’m sold.

And he can tell it in the lobby
to the old men at the bar.
They’ll all clink his cup,
and make shit up,
and take it all too far.
They’ll tell a lie about the summer
where they “once had me alone”.
I’ll reside inside a sonnet.
I’m a picture in a phone.

But I’ve aged beyond the angel
that you saw inside me then.
A grotesque and fading memory
trapped underneath a pen.
You’ll just ignore me in the hallway
but I’ll write my little songs
to tell myself it happened my way.
When it didn’t all along.

I’m still trapped inside that mirror,
where I painted my eye gold,
among the last remaining pride
my adolescence used to hold.

But I will always be a martyr.
I will fill your life with sounds.
I’ll be a wind chime in the window
catching light to throw around.
I will tear apart your bedroom.
I will call you in the night.
I will exist in every second
just to decorate your life,
and when you’re done you can discard me
like the others always do.
I will nurse my wounds until
another artist needs me new.
I will always reassemble
to fit perfectly in view
for anybody that decides that I’m use.

Lonely and forgotten is the muse.

Published on August 16th, 2024