**Intro**

oooh ooooh

**Verse 1**

I was raised in the interstice between caution and collapse,

Where silence curated discipline and patience wore a mask.

I learned semantics from the weight behind a stare,

From sentences unfinished, from the oxygen of prayer.

Time moved deliberate, like it feared its own intent,

Every second felt indebted to the rooms that I’d been in.

I archived my instincts, mislabeled them as doubt,

Called survival adaptation, called exhaustion figuring out.

**Pre-Chorus 1**

There is literacy in absence, in what we never say,

Pressure doesn’t need a voice to reorganize the way.

**Chorus**

So let this be an utterance I don’t refine or brace,

A steady declaration learning how to take up space.

I am not a resolution, not a lesson neatly learned,

Just a body still inhabiting the ground it once returned.

I’m not healed into simplicity or broken past repair,

I’m practicing remaining when the urge is to disappear.

Let this sound like breathing, unremarkable, sincere,

A quiet form of presence I am finally staying near.

**Verse 2**

I pursued resilience until it resembled corrosion,

Confused endurance with virtue, self-erasure with devotion.

Wore confidence performative, a synthetically calm grin,

While entropy negotiated quietly within.

Every affirmation sounded requisitioned, not earned,

Every lesson half-delivered, every warning underlined.

I fortified my posture, left the fractures unaddressed,

Built a monument to coping where reflection should’ve rest.

**Pre-Chorus 2**

Some afflictions never riot, they quietly remain,

Healing isn’t motion, it’s permission to stay.

**Chorus**

So let this be an utterance I don’t rush to complete,

A language made of pauses learning how to speak.

I am not redeemed by effort or defined by what I bear,

Just a witness to the moment choosing not to tear.

I’m not fixed into certainty or lost beyond repair,

I’m resisting the reflex to evaporate in air.

Let this sound like grounding, like feet against the floor,

Like choosing to be here without demanding more.

**Bridge**

If I were granted audience with my antecedent self,

I would not interrogate the ruin or the wealth.

I would say you were sufficient prior to the proof,

You were breathing, not defective, not a thesis to be used.

You owe no spectacle of suffering to be profound,

Depth is not synonymous with bleeding on the ground.

To remain sentient in a world that profits from the numb

Is an act of quiet defiance, and you’ve already won.

**Final Chorus**

So let this be an utterance devoid of ornament or plea,

An acoustic affidavit sworn in measured honesty.

I am neither absolved nor undone nor complete,

Just articulating presence with deliberate receipt.

I am staying with the process, not demanding release,

Letting meaning take its shape incrementally.

If this language meets someone fracturing in place,

Let it settle as recognition, not a cure to replace.

We do not resurrect in mythic, singular release,

We assemble our becoming sentence by sentence, piece by piece.