[Intro]
[Live drums and sequencer perform the same rhythm with tiny timing differences that gradually become audible.]

[Verse 1]
I woke to the call log still bright by the bed,
A proof that one sentence had left my own head.
By nine I was seated beneath office light,
The danger made distant by daylight and white.
I opened the branch where the night’s work remained;
The methods were ordered, efficient and named.
I knew why each piece had been placed where it stood,
Yet knowing alone did not make it feel good.

[Pre-Chorus]
The keys felt familiar, the motion was planned,
But every completion felt second-hand.
I entered the prompt. The solution began.
The system wrote quickly through borrowed hands.

[Chorus]
Borrowed hands on the keys tonight,
Borrowed reason setting wrong things right.
Borrowed hands, but the pulse is mine;
Who draws the border through a shared design?
I choose the question, it offers the plans.
Am I still building with borrowed hands?

[Verse 2]
The machine did not force me to keep what it made;
I tested each answer, revised and obeyed.
Yet speed has a gravity, quiet and strong:
The faster it offered, the less I stayed long.
I stopped asking why when the output was sound,
Stopped tracing the path that the model had found.
A craft once embodied in failure and doubt
Became the direction of work coming out.

[Pre-Chorus]
The keys felt familiar, the motion was planned,
But craft without friction slipped out of my hand.
I entered the prompt. The solution began.
The system wrote quickly through borrowed hands.

[Chorus]
Borrowed hands on the keys tonight,
Borrowed reason setting wrong things right.
Borrowed hands, but the pulse is mine;
Who draws the border through a shared design?
I choose the question, it offers the plans.
Am I still building with borrowed hands?

[Instrumental Break]
[Human piano improvises around an exact sequencer pattern while guitar and violin exchange unfinished phrases.]

[Bridge]
The machine said nothing of ownership’s claim.
It did not request an award or a name.
The conflict was mine: I had needed its speed,
Then feared the reflection produced by that need.
A tool can extend what a body can do;
A crutch can be useful and still alter you.

[Duet]
[Natural Voice]
I carry the purpose, the context, the cost.

[Processed Voice]
I carry the patterns your tired mind lost.

[Natural Voice]
I decide what survives and what reaches the page.

[Processed Voice]
Then authorship changes; it does not erase.

[Final Chorus]
Borrowed hands on the keys tonight,
Borrowed reason under cyan light.
Borrowed hands, yet the choice is mine:
I draw and redraw every moving line.
I choose the question, reject half the plans.
Maybe I am building through borrowed hands.
Not pure, not stolen, not fully unmanned.
A human decision in borrowed hands.

[Outro]
[The processed vocal double disappears, leaving the natural baritone to sing the final phrase unaccompanied.]

My hands are still here.
They tremble.
They choose.