The Wave
Devorah Toren · synced 19 August 2026
Three related pieces. Foreign Waves and “I have something to tell you” are the same lyric. The Wave is an earlier lyric draft. “I’m inside the water” is a later poem on the same image, not a song chart.
1. Foreign Waves (current lyric)
I feel a wave coming
Do you want to hear?
It's coming straight towards me
I see it crystal clear
I want to understand it
I want to know its name
I know it's not so simple
How to play the game
When you look into my eyes
Can you hear what I don’t say
When I look into my heart
(Sing this song with me)
(So my heart can beat)
I forget the storms I've weathered
I forget the times before
I can only see what's coming
I don’t like what's knocking at my door
One breath when the wave rises
One breath the light is gone
One breath despair is shouting
What if the darkness won?
When you look into my eyes
Can you hear what I don’t say
When I look inside my heart
(Sing this song with me)
(So my heart can beat)
C part
There's a hush before the water breaks
A gentle breath the ocean takes
Each drowning forces me to rise
With salty water in my eyes.
I learn to breathe inside the roar
I have the strength and the power for the war
I am not the sea, I'm not the wave, I'm not the shore
I am something more
When you look into my eyes
Can you hear what I don’t say
When I look into my heart
Come and sing with me
So my heart can beat
Come and sing with me
So my heart can beat
2. The Wave (earlier lyric)
I feel a wave coming
Do you want to hear?
A metaphor for something
That many people fear
I don’t understand it
I don’t know its name
Can someone teach me
The rules of the game
When you look into my eyes
Can you hear what I don’t say
When I look into my heart
I have the strength I’ve gathered
From the times before
But what if this one's different
The one knocking at my door
I breathe as the wave rises
The light is gone
Despair is shouting
What if darkness won?
Musical interlude. Chaos.
Chorus?
C part
There's a hush before the water breaks
A gentle breath the ocean takes
Each drowning teaches me to rise
With salty water in my eyes.
I learn to breathe inside the roar
Reaching for hope like never before
I'm not the sea, not the wave, not the shore
I am so much more
Come and sing with me
So my heart can beat
Come and sing with me
So my heart can beat
3. I'm inside the water (poem)
I'm inside the water,
And I don't know where I've gone,
The sky has lost its shape above,
The shore has come undone.
I'm inside the water,
And the wave is all I see,
A world of moving shadows
Closing in around me.
I reach for something steady,
For a rock, a rope, a sign,
But everything I try to hold
Slips through these hands of mine.
I'm inside the water,
And my lungs are burning now,
Searching through the chaos
For a way, a where, a how.
I break the surface briefly,
Steal a breath and sink again,
Caught between the fear of now
And not knowing where I've been.
The panic comes in flashes,
Sharp as lightning in the dark,
Telling me the ocean
Has already left its mark.
Telling me I'm helpless,
Telling me to let it win,
Telling me this endless sea
Will never let me in.
But somewhere underneath it,
Beneath the fear and noise,
A quieter tide is moving,
A softer kind of voice.
It says, "You do not need to
Cross the ocean all at once.
You do not need the answers.
You do not need to run."
"Find the next breath waiting.
Find the air that's closest by.
You don't have to reach the shoreline.
You only have to try."
So I'm inside the water,
And the wave is still immense,
But I am learning slowly
Not to measure my defense
By whether I can stop it,
Or command the sea to part,
But by how I keep on breathing
When it's breaking through my heart.
One breath when the wave rises.
One breath when I can't see.
One breath when fear is shouting.
One breath belongs to me.
And though the water takes me
Farther than I want to go,
The current cannot take away
The things I've come to know:
That every sea has limits.
That every storm will tire.
That even when I'm trembling,
There is something that survives.
So I'm inside the water,
And I'm frightened, this is true.
But I'm still here beneath the wave,
And somehow making it through.