Lyric

Childhood burned the day the sirens tore the orchard from the sky

My mother vanished in the smoke my father in the firelit rain

The road to home became a grave before I learned to say goodbye

I fed my heart to vengeance then and never felt alive again

They forged me in the discipline of afterburners radar tone and flame

I learned to read the hostile wind and turn my grief to perfect aim

The radios began to name me death before my shadow crossed their sight

Yet every victory left the same cold emptiness behind the night

They call me the Ace Who Could Not Come Home tonight

A king of the kill with a crown of unanswering sorrow

I blacken their dawn and fracture their wings before sunrise

Yet nothing inside me is mended by all that I shatter

No storm of wreckage no ocean of fire can drown what I feel

I win every battle then lose another name to the silence

The loudest praise still leaves me cold and alone

The squadron drinks to fallen scores and sees salvation in my climb

They cheer the streak that cuts the dark and turns the panic back

But in the hangar after dawn the empty bunks outnumber time

And every medal on my chest reflects a face I could not bring back

The enemy now breaks in fear before the warning tone can rise

I move like grief through burning clouds and split their perfect walls apart

But every flaming trail I draw writes one old question on the skies

If all I became was death in flight then where can any home still start

They call me the Ace Who Could Not Come Home tonight

A king of the kill with a crown of unanswering sorrow

I blacken their dawn and fracture their wings before sunrise

Yet nothing inside me is mended by all that I shatter

No storm of wreckage no ocean of fire can drown what I feel

I win every battle then lose another name to the silence

The loudest praise still leaves me cold and alone

I thought revenge would build a road back through the ash to what was taken

Instead it built a throne of wreckage where no human warmth remains

The higher that I climb in war the farther every tender thing retreats

So I keep flying through the dark because the dark still knows my name

I am the Ace Who Could Not Come Home

The victor crowned by a sky that never answers

I ended their raids I shattered their pride I scattered their fire to the wind

Still every dawn finds me kneeling to wounds no triumph can close

No hand reaches through all this glory no voice calls me back from the dead

I land with the living yet sleep with the lost in the ruins again

The strongest reaper the heavens have known remains unsaved unhealed alone

And all of this power still cannot bring me home