Rust Runes (version 2)

Verse

Corner store lights flicker off the glass

Six a.m., the night still clings like smoke

Iron railings cold against my wrist

Every window glowing soft with noise

The old man's voice at five a.m. on the stoop

Swapping stories, blowing out his lungs

Grandmother's tape playing through a cracked speaker

Bass from 1987, low and never done

Pre-Chorus

Something in the iron starts to hum

Every fire escape turning into one

I don't know what it is but I feel it climb

Past the last bar, past the first light line

Chorus

Rust on the rooftops, gold on the street

Every window glowing soft and sweet

The city wakes up to a different beat

Rust runes rising off the pavement heat

Verse 2

Taxi horns turn into something tribal

Strangers clapping where the block used to be

Old lady's curtain catching amber

Neon bleeding past the rooftops' seam

Barefoot on the tar, feeling it hum

Every rusted grate beneath my feet

I used to run from sirens, now I let them in

This city's older than it knows itself

Pre-Chorus

Something in the iron starts to hum

Every fire escape turning into one

I don't know what it is but I feel it climb

Past the last bar, past the first light line

Chorus

Rust on the rooftops, gold on the street

Every window glowing soft and sweet

The city wakes up to a different beat

Rust runes rising off the pavement heat

Bridge

Not a sunrise — this is something older

Something built by hands that never folded

The steel remembers what the light forgets

This is how we turn the block to legends

Outro

Rust on the rooftops, gold on the street

Every window glowing soft and sweet