INHERITANCE

Lyrics

Verse 1 I have died a thousand times Inside the privacy of thoughts Built a thousand little endings Not one I’ve ever got There’s a version where it’s peaceful There’s a version no one knows There’s a version where the whole world Barely notices I go That’s the one I like believing When the walls begin to close That a man can leave this world Without disturbing when he goes But imagination’s merciful In ways that life won’t be It always ends the story Before the ones who love me grieve Chorus So I stay long enough to see it Past the silence I would find Past the moment I’d stop hurting To the wreckage left behind My pain wouldn’t die beside me Wouldn’t vanish when I’m gone It would crawl inside the people Who’d been loving me all along I’d become the empty bedroom The question no one answers right A wound they’d keep reopening For the remainder of their lives I thought death could end my suffering Then I realized— it would only make my suffering multiply Verse 2 Someone would start excavating Every sentence that I said Looking for some hidden warning In the conversations in their head Someone would blame themselves forever For a phone call they postponed Someone else would hate themselves For letting me leave alone Someone would keep my number Long after it’s reassigned Someone would type a message Then remember every time And the cruelest part is knowing I’d never have to see What the thing that ended me Would do to everybody Chorus So I stay long enough to see it Past the silence I would find Past the moment I’d stop hurting To the wreckage left behind My pain wouldn’t die beside me It would learn a hundred names Move into a hundred houses And start sleeping in their veins I’d become a date they dreaded A photograph they couldn’t hide The permanent unanswered question: Was there something I could’ve tried? I thought death could end my suffering Then I realized— it would only make my suffering multiply Bridge And sometimes that’s the only reason. That’s the part nobody sings. Not hope. Not God. Not some beautiful revelation about what tomorrow brings. Sometimes I don’t want tomorrow. Sometimes I don’t want anything. Sometimes staying alive isn’t courage. It’s refusing to leave my blood on somebody else’s memory. Because I know what grief does. It doesn’t bury the dead. It buries pieces of the living beside them. Verse 3 So when my mind begins rehearsing What the world looks like without me I force the picture wider Than the silence promises it’ll be I see somebody at my funeral Trying desperately not to shake I see someone years from now Still wondering what they missed that day I see anger mixed with sorrow Love contaminated by regret People bargaining with a man They’ll never get to answer them And there I am— finally free of every problem I was desperate to outrun While everyone I ever loved inherits every single one Final Chorus So I stay here with the darkness Though some nights it knows my name I stay here with the ugliness Because somebody has to hold the weight And if the choice is carrying it Or scattering it when I leave Then tonight I’ll keep the burden From becoming their disease Maybe someday I’ll want morning Maybe someday staying won’t be war But tonight I need no reason More beautiful than this: I know exactly where my pain would go if I didn’t breath. Outro Death keeps offering me silence. But it never mentions how loud I’d become inside everyone else. So I stay. Not because I am unafraid to die. Not because I’ve learned to love my life. I stay because I love them enough to understand: There are some inheritances you don’t leave to the people you love.