I’m still holding on

Lyrics

(Voice enters: A whisper, so close it’s almost internal. Hoarse, fragmented.) This ain’t the valley… This is the root of the valley. Where the sun don’t even send a shadow… Just a… permanent grey. Where my prayers don’t echo… They just… Absorb. Into the walls. They talk about a burden light… But what’s the word… For the weight of nothing? For the gravity of an empty chair… For the sound of a name… That ain’t been spoken in here… in years? (Music: A deep, lone cello string is bowed slowly. It groans.) I’ve traced Your promises… Like braille on wet paper. The ink’s run. The words… they blur. My faith isn’t a mustard seed… It’s a grain of sand… In a hourglass… And all I hear… Is the fall. (Choir enters: Not with chords, but with a cluster of close, tense harmonies. No words. Just a haunting "Ooooh" that feels more like a question than assurance.) And You… Are you the silence… Or the thing just beyond it? Are You the wound… Or the antiseptic sting I don’t feel no more? My theology is a skeleton now. Just bones of what I used to know. And the wind whistles through the ribs… A hymn I can’t remember the tune to. (Music builds slightly: The heartbeat drum becomes a slow, stumbling march. A distorted, faint electric guitar whines a single, repeated note of anguish.) I’ve offered You my tears, Lord… But the well’s run to rust. I’ve offered You my shouting… But my voice is just dust. What do You want… With the fossil of a feeling? With the archaeology of a broken heart? Do You resurrect… Or just… catalog the parts? (Choir shifts: Their "Ooooh" becomes a word. A low, insistent chant: "What remains... what remains...") (The lead voice cracks, not with sweetness, but with a raw scrape of vulnerability.) So if I’m holding on… What’s left to hold? When the rope is just a thread… And the thread is in my soul… And it’s fraying… God… It’s fraying. And my grip… is just the memory of a grip. But… (A profound pause. The music almost stops. Just the ambient hum.) But… There’s a pulse. Beneath the numbness. Not a drum. A… flutter. A moth against a frozen window. Tiny. Fragile. Stupid, even. Is that… You? Not in the answer. But in the stupidity… Of the moth? In the absurdity… Of a grain of sand… believing it’s part of a mountain? Somewhere? (Music transforms: The dissonant synth pad slowly, almost imperceptibly, resolves into a pure, clear major chord. The cello finds a harmonic note. The heartbeat steadies.) I don’t need a miracle. Not anymore. I need… The texture of the darkness… To change. I need the silence… To feel less like abandonment… And more like… A listening. (Choir now sings words, softly, like a truth discovered in a basement): Maybe the holding… isn't in the hand. Maybe the holding… is in the being held. When you can't even feel the arms… Maybe the held… is all there is. (Final statement, spoken with exhausted, bedrock clarity): So I ain’t holding on to faith. Faith feels like a verb I can’t conjugate. I’m being held… By the Is. Before the Amen. Before the plea. By the sheer, stubborn, terrifying Is. That was here… Before my why. And will be here… After my last… syllable… of doubt… …fades. (Outro: The pure chord swells gently, then fades, leaving only the steady, patient heartbeat. It continues for several seconds in the silence after the voice stops. Then, it too fades to nothing.)