[Intro] I don’t need the photograph. [Verse 1] There’s a water ring upon the table, A shallow cut beneath the chair, A handprint sleeping on the window That winter brings back through the air. The room has changed its shape around you. The walls pretend they don’t recall. But one floorboard still bends downward Where your footsteps crossed the hall. [Pre-Chorus] Proof is not the thing that stays. Proof is what can’t be repaired. I am not the person I was Before I knew that you were there. [Chorus] You were here In the dent beside the doorway, In the cup with the fracture, In the words beneath the paint. You were here. And forgetting cannot change it. I don’t need you to return To know you mattered while you stayed. [Verse 2] There is rust beneath the city Where a clock no longer moves. Someone stayed beside the silence So that we could make it through. Some came home into the morning. Some became the names we bear. Not every hand escaped the darkness, But every hand once held us there. [Pre-Chorus] Proof is not a file or number. Not a face the glass preserved. Proof is every life made different By the space that you disturbed. [Chorus] You were here In the dent beside the doorway, In the cup with the fracture, In the words beneath the paint. You were here. And forgetting cannot change it. I don’t need you to return To know you mattered while you stayed. [Bridge] Take the records. Take the dates. Take the picture from its frame. Take the sound out of the hallway. Take the letters from the name. You can empty every bedroom. You can teach the world to lie. But you cannot make me someone Whose life you never passed beside. [Final Chorus] You were here, And the dark failed to erase you. Every person that you changed Still bears the outline of your name. You were here. I don’t need another ending. I can love what I remember And still let you go today. You were here When the night said you were nothing. You were here. I remember. That is enough. [Outro] You were here. I am still here.
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