Final Landing (reversed version)

[Verse 1: The Drift] You were a compass spinning senseless, north was nowhere to be found, A vagabond addicted to the vagrant’s vagrant ground. You chased the El Dorado hum in every city’s gold, Growing old while trying to keep your fever young and cold. You mistook the glitter for the genuine affair, A moth inside the motion of the midnight-manic air. You drifted through the tenements of “almost” and “too soon”— While I was lighting candles in the dark of every room. [Pre-Chorus: The Cost] You were mapping constellations while you ignored the solid ground, In love with being lost, yeah, in the not-being-found. [Chorus: The Decay] But gravity is patient; it waits for orbits to decay. You’re done with chasing comets that are burning out today. You’re trading in the maybe for the certainty you know, Trading erratic fever for the steady, certain glow. I ain’t the launchpad, baby—I’m the planet and the core, The heavy, holy gravity that pulls you home for more. The physics of your wandering have finally unwound: You’ve circled long enough—this is your final landing ground. [Verse 2: The Recognition] You treated me like silence while you chased the empty noise, Playing with the pretty, polished, dangerous little toys. You wanted complex algorithms, riddles wrapped in wire, While I was just the architecture, holding up the fire. I built a sanctuary while you built castles made of steam, I kept the foundation when you trafficked in the dream. You sought the storm, the voltage, the jagged edge of feel, Forgetting that the only truth is what is solid, what is real. [Bridge: The Structure] But I ain’t just a harbor—I’m the reason you set sail, The ballast and the anchor in the belly of the gale. I don’t demand the spotlight like the flash-and-fading light; I simply hold the ceiling up against the crushing night. The ancient, steady heartbeat that the chaos can’t erode, The structural integrity beneath the heavy load. [Verse 2.5: The Trespass] You got seduced by symmetry, the orbit of the familiar skin, Chased the shimmer on the surface when the soul was deep within. You wandered through the lookalikes, hypnotized by mirrored shine, Mistook the branches for the root and blurred the fault of yours. But every borrowed fire, every proximate embrace, Was just a guttering candle to my everlasting blaze. You were digging in the wrong dirt, sifting glitter from the cold— Panning riverbeds for copper, calling pyrite gold. [Verse 3: The Alchemy] I’m the logic in the bloodline, the iron in the vein, The shelter standing open in the center of the rain. I never asked for spotlights, never needed to be crowned— I just kept the table level and I kept the anchor down. A synthesis of mercy and a will as hard as stone, I turned a pile of lumber into something like a home. While you were sketching castles on the canvas of the air, You turned around and realized that I was everywhere. [Final Chorus: The Constant] I’m the axis of the turning, the silence in the hum, The sum of all the numbers that the years add up to become. Not a variable drifting in some calculated chance, But the absolute constant in the wild, swinging dance. The soil is rich and fertile where my shadow softly lies; There ain’t no distant galaxy against my storm-gray eyes. A love that isn’t burning out, but building slow and sure— The heavy, holy substance, not the desperate, breathless cure. [Outro: The Covenant] The walls are strong. The root is deep. I am the promise... That the seasons keep. Solid ground. Your final landing.