Lyric

A ticket crease in my jacket

Soap scent under my nails

One coin I never spent

Cold from another rail

The room let me go without drama

Sheets pulled loose from the bed

I checked the drawer twice for nothing

Still felt watched by what I left

No view could fit inside the frame

Only the light on the floor

Only the dust that lifted once

When I opened the door

It was not the place

It was the weight it gave my hands

Not the road

But the silence after wheels and sand

A little warmth behind my ribs

A borrowed word I almost knew

The shape of being briefly held

By somewhere passing through

At the station, I changed my shirt

The old one held the air

Smoke, rain, salt, and cheap detergent

Folded into one square

I kept a second of hallway noise

A laugh below the stairs

Not for memory

Just to prove

The world had met me there

It was not goodbye

It was my body learning proof

How a morning can stay warm

Long after leaving the room

Some things do not come home with names

They travel under skin

A pressure in the collarbone

A door still opening within

I thought I carried almost nothing

But my steps had changed their sound

Like every road I failed to keep

Had moved into the ground

It was not the map

Or the stamp, or the folded receipt

It was the softer way I stood

With distance underneath my feet

A small light caught behind my eyes

A stranger’s kindness, almost gone

The ache of having been elsewhere

And waking with it on