Lyric

I came back carrying static

Not triumph, not repair

Just old pressure in the bloodstream

And a handful of missing years

A lot was taken quietly

A lot I handed over myself

Some by fear, some by delay

Some by leaving things on the shelf

There are regrets I never polish

They still catch in the back of the mouth

Tiny filings under the language

Small hard evidence I can’t spit out

I don’t stand here as an answer

Not as someone who finally knew

Just as one more living body

That kept a pulse through what it moved through

I got here

But nothing settled

I got here

And the lines still trembled

Strange how joy can disappear

Almost right after it arrives

Barely leaves a temperature

Barely stains the inner wall of the mind

But pain has hooks in it

And the old scenes know where to live

They stay looped behind the eyes

Long after the day that made them did

Trauma has a grip like habit

It keeps rehearsing what it knows

Brings back certain frames uninvited

With perfect timing and familiar clothes

So I learned pace

Not as freedom, not as grace

But as a way to keep that residue

From swallowing all available space

If I run, I run to thin it

If I move, I move to clear

Not to erase what happened

Just to stop it living here

I used to think that beauty

Meant untouched, unscarred, complete

Something whole and self-assured

Something smooth in how it speaks

Now I think it lives elsewhere

In the fracture, in the strain

In the way a shape keeps holding

After weather, after weight

Maybe I have nothing shining

Nothing easy to defend

But the fact that I kept forming

Might be meaning in itself

Every bruise changed the color

Every cut revised the grain

Every failure left a contour

I can finally call my name

If there is anything worth keeping

Let it be this difficult proof

Something damaged can stay vivid

Something unfinished can stay true

I got here

Still marked by it

I got here

Still making sense inside it

No clean ending

Only breath

Between one bar

And the next

I don’t outgrow every shadow

I don’t forgive every wound

I just keep time against the pressure

Room by room

Late by a fraction

Still alive

Not machine-locked

Just trying to arrive

Not cured

Not above it

Not free from what has been

Just human enough

To move before it closes in

I got here

But nothing settled

Hands on the rail

And the rail still trembled

No last frame

No sealed conclusion

Only this life

Still writing through the bruise

I got here

Still unfinished

I got here

With the afterimage in it

And if there’s beauty

Let it be this truth

I kept going

With the broken signal audible too