Aftershock (Don't Turn Your Back On The Ocean) - Lyrics

Title: Aftershock (Don't Turn Your Back On The Ocean)
Artist: Loui Crow
Streaming: All platforms
📱 TikTok: @louicrow

🖤 ABOUT THE SONG —

This isn’t a song about moving on.
It’s a spell for what still moves in.

AFTERSHOCK is a spiritual trauma ritual disguised as a rap poem.
It’s not about healing in the “done” sense.
It’s about letting the pain echo without apology.
It’s about saying:

I’m not over it,
but I’m under oath now.
And I will not look away.

This is the gutting truth of returning to yourself—
after betrayal, survival, rage repression, childhood erasure, and internal exile.
It’s what happens when you stop trying to be nice
and start listening to the part of you that never flinched.
The one who saw everything.

The ripple is HER.
It’s the aftershock of memory re-entering the body.

The girl in the story is the inner child.
The wave is trauma—sudden, swallowing, uninvited.
The crowd is the world that forgets.
And the ocean is your body—vast, alive, and unable to lie.

The image is real.
I saw a little girl get swept into a whirlpool under a wooden lookout.
Someone ran in after her.
I stood farther off—frozen.
She lived, but the moment stayed.

The true aftershock wasn’t the wave.
It was what happened next:
The silence.
The vanishing.
The way everyone reset like nothing had happened.
The way the world kept smiling while something inside you stopped.

That’s the aftershock.
The echo your body never stopped carrying.
The scream that stayed stored in your spine.

The crowd forgets.
The ocean doesn’t.
That is Aftershock.

This is for the one inside you who remembers everything—
and is finally ready to speak.
No flinching.
No turning away.

You are the echo.
You are the proof.
You are the aftershock.

🔥 CROW BODY-BREAKDOWN — What The Aftershock Really Is

An aftershock isn’t just the second quake.
It’s the body’s refusal to lie.

It’s the breath that jerks when no threat’s in sight.
The jaw that clamps when the voice tries to rise.
It’s the muscle that remembers the silence.

The world forgets.
The nervous system never does.

We were trained to call the stillness “safe”—
but stillness is where the scream sank.
The body doesn’t forget the wave.
The body becomes it.

🗣️ Crow Affirmation:

“I hold shape in the aftershock.
I begin where the silence stopped.”

🖋 LYRICS — AFTERSHOCK

[Verse]
Held my tongue ‘til it split like a fault line.
Smiled so wide I bruised my jawline.
Thought if I broke myself down for the table,
the pain would settle.

[Verse]
I prayed with a knife to the back of my thigh.
Blamed it on demons that never replied.
But the body doesn’t lie. The rage, the shake—
It sings when the voice can’t hold that weight.

[Hook]
Taught to fold like a prayer in a fist.
Taught to flinch when the anger twists.
But fear turns sharp when stuffed in the mouth—
And the glass won’t lie when the scream comes out.
You see the mark? You name the face.
You feel the rage? Then bless that blaze.
I don’t need heaven to tell me I’m whole.
This ripple I ride rewrote my soul.

[Hook]
I hold the shape the silence dropped.
I move where the stillness stopped.
I am the after. I am the lock.
I don’t break. I don’t drop.
I hold shape in the aftershock.

[Verse]
The ocean spoke my name out loud.
She didn’t flinch. She didn’t bow.
She said: I saw what they erased.
And I kept your face.

[Story Verse]
We stopped on the 101—coastline loud, waves rising like they knew my name.
The wooden lookout groaned in wind, salt stinging like a blade through blame.
Down below, a girl in pink, boots too close to the water’s edge.
Her mother turned, eyes on her phone, back to the tide like a careless pledge.
Then the wave hit hard—round and fast, like the ocean planned her grip.
Snatched the girl in a single pull, spun her deep in a spiral dip.
Someone ran. Dove without words. Hauled her up from the froth and spit.
She screamed. She gasped. Her mother broke. A crowd closed in around the split.
And then—
just air.
just sun.
just sky.
The witnesses scattered. The moment died.
A new group came with beach towels bright.
Smiling like no one had almost lost life.
Like the sand didn’t know. Like the wave didn’t keep.
Like death didn’t brush its teeth that deep.
But I saw it.
Still feel it.
And I don’t forget.
Don’t turn your back on the ocean.

[Hook]
I once believed that calm was peace.
But tides don’t stop when witnesses leave.
After. After.
Not the blow, the answer.
Not the break, the anchor.
Don’t turn your back on the ocean.
She waits for the part that forgets.
Don’t turn your back on the ocean.
Don’t trust her quiet face.
She reaches when you soften.
She moves without a trace.
Don’t turn your back on the ocean.
She waits where the memory slips.
She moves when the stillness deepens.
She pulls with invisible grip.

[Verse]
Now every echo that they forgot
Rings through me like an aftershock.
It’s not the crash, it’s the crush.
I am the after. I am the rush.
I flinch when the wind shifts.
Still brace in the silence.
My jaw’s got a memory.
My back holds the violence.
My breath is a seer.
My blood wrote a vow.
They left me in splinters.
I walk like a howl.

[Spoken]
The crowd left. The curtain fell.
But the air stayed strange.
And I…
I learned how to hold shape
inside the after.

[Hook]
I live inside the aftershock.
I breathe where the silence bends.
I carry what the moment dropped.
I start where the story ends.
I don’t break. I don’t drop.
I hold shape in the aftershock.

[Verse]
I’m the beat they buried beneath the ocean floor.
The crest in the waves they tried to ignore.
It’s not the storm, it’s the salt that stays.
Not the wave, it’s the pull that plays.
Not the sea, it’s the slip in thought.
I am after. I am what’s not.
I am aftershock.
She said: I saw what they erased.
And I kept your face.
Don’t turn your back on the ocean.
The tide doesn’t need permission.
She’ll swallow what the world forgets—
Then drag it down into submission.

[Hook]
You saw the scream. I lived the breath.
I am what’s born inside the death.
I am aftershock. I am next.
I used to brace. Now I bend.

[Verse]
I heard what hurt me.
I named it. I let it echo.
I didn’t ask it to leave.
It’s not the quake, it’s what I made.
Not the wound, it’s how I stayed.
Not the break, it’s what I claimed.
I am after. I remain.
Don’t turn your back on the ocean.
The silence still knows your name.
Don’t flinch when the water’s open.
The ripple remembers the wave.

[Hook]
I live inside the aftershock.
I breathe where the silence bends.
I carry what the moment dropped.
I start where the story ends.
I don’t break. I don’t drop.
I hold shape in the aftershock.