Unspoken Cost
Intro
Verse 1
I found you in a notebook
on the edge of the night,
an English class assignment
with the sources cited right.
They asked for Yeats and Shakespeare,
so you let them hold the door,
and you slipped the truth right past them.
Nobody looked for more.
Verse 2
You said behind you stood a man
with his morals all in place.
You never once called him "I," love.
You never gave him your face.
One road was happiness, you wrote,
the other, innocence lost,
and you set the word "unspoken"
right in front of "cost."
Chorus
You didn't need me to tell you.
You already knew the toll:
the ones who raised you turning cold,
the name, the work, the home,
the stares, the pointing fingers,
the thing you feared you'd be.
You knew exactly what it cost,
and you walked on through to me.
Verse 3
And for five minutes, sweetheart,
nobody looked twice.
I moved through rooms like water.
I was no one, and it was nice.
Then a headache in twenty-eighteen
that nothing else could touch.
They gave me steroids by the handful,
and they gave me far too much.
The face I'd walked through fire for
went somewhere I can't find.
You got your wings for five minutes,
then only in my mind.
Verse 4
Now I hold it through the movie,
and I hold it on the drive.
I count the stick-figure doorways
like it's how I stay alive,
'cause somewhere there's a man who thinks
that room is his to keep,
and you saw him coming too, love,
back when you couldn't sleep.
Bridge
You asked the night to hide you,
to carry you into the dark.
It did.
You were right about the dark.
You wrote it's nobler to take the arrows
than to hide behind a smile.
You were right. I took them,
every single mile.
Three years after the car,
and you wrote better than you knew.
Final Chorus
I won't tell you it was worth it,
and I won't say it was wrong.
You saw every stone along the road,
and you walked it all along.
I'm the one you were afraid you'd be,
and I'm the one you'd choose.
You knew exactly what it cost,
and you walked on through.
Outro
Here I stand.
Still here.