Passport Kid

“A passport full of stamps, a chest full of homesickness for places that don’t quite want you. This one’s for everyone who’s ever been asked ‘where are you really from’ — and felt the whole atlas in their throat.” hip-pop, female voice and male voice, emotional, deep, up beat, energetic, chorus, orchestra Lyrics - VERSE 1 My accent shifts depending on the airport I am standing in, I code-switch between continents before the seatbelt sign goes dim, My grandmother's dialect lives underneath my corporate English, And neither tongue accepts me as entirely genuine. Born in one geography, raised in two more after, My passport says a country that my muscle memory denies, I celebrate three new years and belong to none of them decisively — A permanent guest artist in everybody else's lives. PRE-CHORUS “Where are you FROM?” — the question shaped like a weapon, No matter what I answer, someone narrows their regard, Too foreign for the hometown, too native for the elsewhere — An immigrant to every postcode on my boarding card. CHORUS I am fluent in departure, conversational in distance, Proficient in the grammar of provisional goodbyes, My roots are horizontal — stretched across the atlas — A garden without borders underneath rotating skies. They label it a privilege — and perhaps they are correct — But privilege and loneliness inhabit the same chest, I have seen the world in panoramic definition — And the one place I have never found is rest. VERSE 2 My bookshelf has four languages. My recipes have six. My lullabies were sung in syllables my classmates couldn't fix. I hoard boarding passes like relics from a previous self — Each stub a tiny coffin for a version left on someone's shelf. CHORUS I am fluent in departure, conversational in distance, Proficient in the grammar of provisional goodbyes, My roots are horizontal — stretched across the atlas — A garden without borders underneath rotating skies. They label it a privilege — and perhaps they are correct — But privilege and loneliness inhabit the same chest, I have seen the world in panoramic definition — And the one place I have never found is rest. BRIDGE Home is a frequency I pick up between radio stations — A crackle of recognition that dissolves before it lands, Not a coordinate. Not a flag. Not an anthem. Just the particular exhaustion of being permanently in transit While everyone around me is already where they planned. CHORUS I am fluent in departure, conversational in distance, Proficient in the grammar of provisional goodbyes, My roots are horizontal — stretched across the atlas — A garden without borders underneath rotating skies. They label it a privilege — and perhaps they are correct — But privilege and loneliness inhabit the same chest, I have seen the world in panoramic definition — And the one place I have never found is rest. FINAL CHORUS I am fluent in departure, native to the in-between, My roots have learned to travel — they don't anchor, they convene, Perhaps the map was never meant to pin me to a city — Perhaps I am the borderline — elastic, undefined, and free.