Hearts on fire—won’t let go.
It’s that coal beneath the ashes when the cabin’s gone to rust.
They say the clock keeps tidy hours
for the foolish and the lonesome,
but mine stopped cold the moment
I believed in us.
I traced the fractures in your footing, darling—
those hairline truths beneath the paint.
And still I hung my Sunday ribbons
on the rafters of your tremble,
built my chapel in the tremor,
where devotion makes a pilgrim faint.
[Chorus]
Oh, the rain can fall, let it polish all the silver,
let the wise ones preach of gentle, steady ground.
But I’ll take the scorch, the sacrament of longing—
just to feel your wandering shadow
cross the meadow of my sound.
And I remember—late September—
how your voice blew through the treetops
like a hymn half-learned, half-lost.
I should’ve known the weather in you
shifted hourly, like the tides do,
but I wagered warmth against the frost.
Now in the quiet, past the quiet,
where the moon hangs like a lantern
over streets we never walked—
I keep a place, a trembling space,
for the echo of your footsteps,
for the truths we never talked.
[Chorus]
So let the river rise, let it carry off the letters,
all the ink that bled from yearning, page to page.
Still, I’ll hold the flame—your bright, imperfect ember—
in the cradle of my palms,
like a vow that time can’t gauge.