Emptiness

This is not darkness
Darkness holds you close
Darkness hears you breathing
Even when you don’t
This is emptiness
An echo with no end
You scream into the silence
And it never answers back again

Standing in the wreckage
Of a safety never owned
Silence wasn’t saving me—
It just delayed the storm

This is emptiness
Where the voices disappear
Where we’re begging just to matter
Just to feel like we are here
This is emptiness
But we’re still reaching through
Through the smoke, through the silence
I am still reaching you

Children learn in whispers
How to shrink and how to hide
Which part of who they are
Feels the safest to survive
Sirens sound like warnings
Even when they pass you by
Love feels like a crime scene
Home’s a place you memorize

Little hearts go missing
Before they lose their teeth
It’s easier to say “they’re gone”
Than explain what’s underneath

This is emptiness
Where the system looks away
Signed in ink, enforced in silence
Every single day
This is emptiness
But we’re still reaching through
Through the fear, through the fire
I am still reaching you

Grief in every language
Fear in every skin
Silence taught as survival
Just to make it through again
Buried pain goes deeper
Till the world forgets it’s there
But it’s breathing underneath us
In the water, in the air

They call it order
They call it being free
But freedom shouldn’t ask you
To prove you deserve to breathe

This is emptiness
Where empathy once lived
Where we traded human hearts
For the profit margin’s bid
This is emptiness
But we’re still breaking through
Through the ash, through the damage
I am still reaching you

See me
Hear me
Don’t erase my name
Let me live without
Having to explain
Not perfection
Not a perfect world
Just the right to exist
For every boy and girl

This isn’t just hatred
This is neglect in disguise
This is a burning house
With nowhere left to hide
Final Chorus (anthem)
This is emptiness
But it doesn’t get to win
Not while hands are reaching out
Not while hope is breaking in
This is emptiness
But we’re not done yet
Through the smoke, through the silence
We are reaching—

Still reaching
Still breathing
Not gone yet

blues, pop