Final Landing
[Verse 1: The Drift] I was a compass spinning senseless, north was nowhere to be found, A vagabond addicted to the vagrant’s vagrant ground. I chased the El Dorado hum in every city’s gold, Growing old while trying to keep my fever young and cold. I mistook the glitter for the genuine affair, A moth inside the motion of the midnight-manic air. I drifted through the tenements of “almost” and “too soon”— While you were lighting candles in the dark of every room. [Pre-Chorus: The Cost] I was mapping constellations while I 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. I’m done with chasing comets that are burning out today. I’m trading in the maybe for the certainty I know, Trading erratic fever for the steady, certain glow. You ain’t the launchpad, baby—you’re the planet and the core, The heavy, holy gravity that pulls me home for more. The physics of my wandering have finally unwound: I’ve circled long enough—this is my final landing ground. [Verse 2: The Recognition] I treated you like silence while I chased the empty noise, Playing with the pretty, polished, dangerous little toys. I wanted complex algorithms, riddles wrapped in wire, While you were just the architecture, holding up the fire. You built a sanctuary while I built castles made of steam, You kept the foundation when I trafficked in the dream. I 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 you ain’t just a harbor—you’re the reason I set sail, The ballast and the anchor in the belly of the gale. You don’t demand the spotlight like the flash-and-fading light; You 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] I got seduced by symmetry, the orbit of the familiar skin, Chased the shimmer on the surface when the soul was deep within. I wandered through the lookalikes, hypnotized by mirrored shine, Mistook the branches for the root and blurred the fault of mine. But every borrowed fire, every proximate embrace, Was just a guttering candle to your everlasting blaze. I was digging in the wrong dirt, sifting glitter from the cold— Panning riverbeds for copper, calling pyrite gold. [Verse 3: The Alchemy] You’re the logic in the bloodline, the iron in the vein, The shelter standing open in the center of the rain. You never asked for spotlights, never needed to be crowned— You just kept the table level and you kept the anchor down. A synthesis of mercy and a will as hard as stone, You turned a pile of lumber into something like a home. While I was sketching castles on the canvas of the air, I turned around and realized that you were everywhere. [Final Chorus: The Constant] You’re 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 your shadow softly lies; There ain’t no distant galaxy against your 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. You are the promise... That the seasons keep. [Guitar fades on] Solid ground. My final landing.
