[VERSE 1]
We were sixteen and convinced
the world would wait for us awhile
Passing headphones back and forth
chasing streetlights for miles
You’d steal my jumpers when you were cold
leave rings from mugs across my desk
And somehow every ordinary thing
felt permanent back then
I still know the way you laughed
before it caught in your throat
Funny how the smallest things
are what survive the most
⸻
[PRE-CHORUS]
Then one day the future changed
without asking either of us
⸻
[CHORUS]
Vinnie, I didn’t want seventeen
not if you weren’t coming too
Didn’t want the summer sun
or another sky of blue
Everyone kept moving forward
like that’s just what people do
But I spent that whole year standing still
because it came without you
⸻
[VERSE 2]
I didn’t go where they gathered
couldn’t stand beneath those lights
Couldn’t watch them close a chapter
I was still trying to write
So I stayed home with your messages
reading words I’d learned by heart
Searching for some hidden sentence
that could pull us back to start
And I hated every morning
for proving time was real
Because waking up meant facing
something I refused to feel
⸻
[PRE-CHORUS]
The world kept speaking in present tense
while mine forgot how to move
⸻
[CHORUS]
Vinnie, I didn’t want seventeen
I didn’t want the years ahead
Didn’t want to hear your name
and feel the silence instead
Everybody talked of healing
but all I heard was losing you
And every birthday felt wrong somehow
because it came without you
⸻
[VERSE 3]
I stopped speaking to your family
not long after everything changed
Every conversation left me carrying
a different kind of pain
They never liked the truth between us
the shape our love had taken on
Like if they looked the other way long enough
somehow it would all be gone
And I was tired of defending
something beautiful and true
So I let that door close quietly
and lost the rest of you
The stories only they remembered
The photographs I’d never see
The pieces of your life before me
that still mattered desperately
⸻
[BRIDGE]
For a while I thought love meant following
wherever somebody goes
For a while I wore grief so tightly
it settled in my bones
I didn’t want tomorrow
I didn’t want to grow
Didn’t want a world that kept your absence
and expected me to cope
But the strange thing about surviving
is it happens anyway
One breath
One hour
One impossible day
⸻
[FINAL CHORUS]
Vinnie, I never stopped loving you
I just learned a different shape
One that lives inside the missing
One that time can never take
And sometimes when the night’s gone quiet
I still talk like you’re in the room
Not because I think you’ll answer
Just because I loved you
And seventeen eventually passed
Then eighteen did too
But none of them felt quite as real
as sixteen felt with you
⸻
[OUTRO]
I still know your favourite song
I still turn when I hear your name
And somewhere inside me
you are sixteen
and laughing again.
Rin
