Verse 1 (blues) I been counting empty chairs in quiet rooms Not the faces, just the shape they leave behind Every season teaches me a different goodbye Some come softly, some don’t give you time I don’t say the names — they live inside my chest Like old photographs I don’t need to see But every road I walk remembers where I’ve been Every silence knows what’s missing from me Refrain 1 (first statement) So I wake up breathing And I stand where I am I didn’t lose them in the leaving They’re still part of who I am Verse 2 (blues) Some were taken before I learned how to ask Why love stays and bodies don’t Some I held while the night stood still With promises it never meant to keep or want There’s a tired kind of strength that no one sees The kind you don’t explain out loud It’s built from all the times you stayed standing When your knees said, this is enough now Refrain 2 (expanded) So I wake up breathing With their weight along my spine I didn’t lose them in the leaving I’ve been carrying their time Every laugh, every lesson Every ache that taught me how They’re not gone — they’re folded into How I’m living now Verse 3 (blues) Years don’t pass the way you think they will They circle back through ordinary days In a song on the radio, a smell in the air In the way the light falls just the same I don’t argue with the missing anymore I let it sit beside me when it comes Grief ain’t always crying out loud Sometimes it’s just love with nowhere to run Final Refrain (arrival) So I wake up breathing Still learning how to stand I didn’t lose them in the leaving They reshaped the shape of who I am What I carry isn’t absence It’s a widening of the ground Every step is made of memory Every heartbeat sounds like now I didn’t lose them in the leaving I carry them I carry them forward I carry them now