The Roots Take Me Home

[Intro] (spoken/half-sung, very low) The ground is warm tonight. Not alive. Just…ready. [Verse 1] I came back to the willow Without the light this time No breath held in my chest No bargains left to try The dirt knew all my footsteps Before I learned my name I don’t feel fear in ending Just the quiet giving way [Pre-Chorus] I laid my weight down gently Like I’d practiced all along Every ache I carried Finally knew where it belonged [Chorus] I’m not asking to be saved I’m not waiting anymore If this is where the silence lives Then this is what I’m for No more standing at the edge No more counting every scar The roots take me home tonight For exactly what I am [Verse 2] She stood where shadows settle Where breath no longer goes Her eyes weren’t full of judgment Just the truth I already know She didn’t say I mattered She didn’t say I failed She said, “you’ve walked far enough” And the ground finally exhaled [Pre-Chorus 2] Hands of earth around my ribs Pulling nothing, asking none Every name I wore in life Loosening, one by one [Chorus] I’m not asking to be saved I’m not waiting anymore I laid my body in the dark Like it knew this door before No crown, no final sentence No fire, no demand The roots take me home tonight With both of Hela’s hands [Verse 3] I felt the roots like fingers Not hungry-only sure Threading through the open spaces I kept pretending I could cure And she was there beside the silence Like a shadow learning form Not to claim me as a warning- Just to keep me from the storm [Bridge] (minimal - almost whispered) If memory is mercy Then let it sink its teeth If rest is just returning Then let me be beneath I don’t need to be remembered I don’t need to stay awake I’ve been every version of myself This is the one I get to keep [Final Chorus] I’m not asking to be saved I’m not afraid to go I didn’t lose myself to death I just stopped holding on No more waiting under branches No more borrowing the light The roots take me home tonight And I don’t fight [Verse 4] I don’t feel smaller in the dark I don’t feel lost beneath the ground Every weight I carried upward Is a shape I don’t need now I thought I’d miss the sound of living Or the way the morning burns But all I feel is something loosening Like finally being learned [Outro] She stayed Until I was part of it. The willow doesn’t bend for me now. It holds.