Lost Ya Glow

Lyrics by Renite Manisha Gosal 12/2023

Lost ya glow? Yeah I know.

Will it hurt when I reach the other side?

Did it hurt when your last breath escaped? 

Counting years since. Lose sense of space and time. 

Living for both of us but your absence is gaping. 

Thinking Ab-Soul gotta do better. I want to do better.  

Lost ya glow? Yeah I know. 

Tryna wake up, go to work, stick to my routine, 

look pretty, be sweet. But I got this other side to me. 

Speaking to youth tryna figure out whats going on inside of them.

They know the same demons I been wrestling,

feel the weight of ancestors pain on their backs. 

They try to numb it, drinking in class. 

Skipping school, looking for bag. 

Trading study drills for cheap thrills, no one reads books anymore. 

Lost ya glow? Yeah I know. Running fast down the wrong path.

No recourse. 

Lauryn , all I see are hard rocks - gems are a finite resource.

Made under pressure but the wrong kind.

Spirit broken before the diamond glistens.

Nothing tactile in our world anymore.

Is anybody listening?

Can AI hold our children with the loving touch they crave?

What to make when the first warm hug they felt was synthetics in the rave?

Lost ya glow? Yeah I know.

I cannot unsee what I see - do you feel me? What I hear swims through the membranes of my mind. I feel your pain wash over me - a bath from the sea I did not mean to slip in. Skinny dipping in collective sorrow. I want us to grow together - laying down in the forest to rest. Letting the soil take me in as their own, returning to my creator - grow roots beneath me, swallowed by the earth like Sita once did.

Perhaps I’m not meant to glow but grow,

intertwine my spirit with sand and silt,

cracked earth, numbed mind,

like the permafrost - we melt together. 

Perhaps I’m not meant to glow, but grow.