[Intro] [Verse 1] I used to think leaving was one clean motion, a door, a bag, a car already running. Nobody taught me the body keeps score of how fast you tried to surface from something that deep. You don't just rise. You stop at every marker. You wait in the dark with the weight still on you, even when every part of you is done, even when you can already see the light up there. [Pre-Chorus] I'm not staying. I'm not asking to stay. I just can't come up all at once without it killing us both. [Chorus] Give me the stops. Give me the stages. Don't make me surface in one single breath. I loved you at depth, I can't leave you at speed some exits require the slow kind of death. This isn't hesitation, this isn't going back, this is just physics, this is just what the body needs. You don't rise from that deep without a plan. You don't leave someone like you all at once and live. [Verse 2] Friends keep asking why I haven't fully gone, why there's still a stop at the halfway mark. I don't expect them to understand the pressure, the kind that builds in places you can't see from land. I'm not lingering because I'm not sure. I'm lingering because sure isn't the same as ready. Some things you have to leave in stages or the leaving itself becomes the thing that ends you. [Pre-Chorus] I'm not staying. I'm not asking to stay. I just can't come up all at once without it killing us both. [Chorus] Give me the stops. Give me the stages. Don't make me surface in one single breath. I loved you at depth, I can't leave you at speed some exits require the slow kind of death. This isn't hesitation, this isn't going back, this is just physics, this is just what the body needs. You don't rise from that deep without a plan. You don't leave someone like you all at once and live. [Bridge] Nobody claps for the diver at the halfway mark. Nobody films the part where you're just floating, waiting. That's not the interesting part of the story. That's just the part that keeps you alive. I'll surface. I promise I'm still surfacing. Just let me do it in the order that doesn't kill me. [Final Chorus] Give me the stops. Give me the stages. Don't make me surface in one single breath. I loved you at depth, I can't leave you at speed some exits require the slow kind of death. This isn't hesitation, this isn't going back, this is just physics, this is just what the body needs. You don't rise from that deep without a plan. You don't leave someone like you all at once and live. [Outro] I'm almost there. I can see the light already. I'm just not going to drown on the way to being free of you.
