[Verse 1 — low, close] My friends, I have a strange request. Don’t make it kind. Don’t make it easier. Please stop loving me for a while. Or stop telling me you do. Because every time I believe you, I begin to make demands you never promised to fulfil. I think - you’ll understand without my speaking. You’ll see me before I disappear. You’ll know which silence means nothing and which one means come here. [Pre-Chorus] And that is far too much to ask of love. Too much to ask of you. Too much hope hidden in one word I keep pretending is true. [Chorus] So stop loving me. Let me stand without the guarantee. Don’t tell me I am safe with you if safe is something I must believe. Stop loving me. Or love me without the promise that you’ll understand, that you’ll always see, that somehow loving me means you won’t hurt me. [Verse 2] I am tired of reading kindness as a map that leads me home. Tired of turning every friendship into somewhere I’m not alone. You miss things. Of course you do. You look away. So do I. And sometimes people love each other and still walk straight past the cry. [Pre-Chorus] Perhaps that isn’t failure. Perhaps that is the cost. Love does not mean nothing hurts. Love does not mean nothing’s lost. [Chorus] So stop loving me. Let me stand without the guarantee. Don’t tell me I am safe with you if safe is something I must believe. Stop loving me. Or love me without the promise that you’ll understand, that you’ll always see, that somehow loving me means you won’t hurt me. [Bridge — almost spoken] If you stay - stay because you choose to. If you ask - listen to the answer. If you see me - see what’s there. Not what love requires. And if one day you fail me, please don’t call it the end. I am trying to learn the difference between being loved and being defended. [Final Chorus — quieter, wider] So stop loving me. At least the way I’ve needed you to. Let me lose the little bargain I have hidden inside the word. Stop loving me until I learn that being wounded doesn’t prove that I was unseen, doesn’t mean that you betrayed me, doesn’t mean I wasn’t loved. [Outro — very close] My friends, forgive me. I am tired. Not of you. I’ll do my part. I’ll try to keep love the way I still see it - quiet, without a claim, without asking it to save me. And please - don’t say that word out loud around me. Let it be something we do. Something we fail at. Something we return to. But not a promise I have to believe. Not yet.
