Let The Music Hold

Whispered stories.

Half a voice.

So much silence…

It started sounding like a choice.

Learned to read a room before I knew myself,

Kept the inconvenient feelings on a higher shelf.

Laugh on cue, stay cool, never take up space,

Got so good at “I’m okay,” it settled on my face.

Whole conversations on the journey back,

All the things I should’ve said between the railway tracks.

Watch my own reflection flicker out against the glass—

How’d I get so used to letting every moment pass?

If I let one honest sentence through,

Would it change the person standing here with you?

I’ve been waiting for the words to come out right—

Maybe they just need to come tonight.

No one ever told me I could feel this way,

Let the music hold what I couldn’t say.

All these words I never said

Coming up for air again.

No one ever showed me what it means to be free,

I was always who somebody needed me to be.

Now beneath the lights, underneath the beat,

There’s a voice I’m learning to believe.

Let it out…

Let it breathe…

There’s a voice—

Sounds like me.

Found an old notebook underneath some clothes,

Pages full of places that I thought I’d go.

Every other sentence started “maybe someday,”

Like I needed someone else to say that it was okay.

Took a blank page, put the date up top,

Wrote until my hand hurt, didn’t cross things off.

Some of it was anger, some of it was grief,

Some of it was knowing there was more to me.

So I let one honest sentence through,

Heard it shake, but heard it carry too.

I don’t need to make it beautiful tonight—

I just need to say, “This feeling’s mine.”

When you asked me how I’d been,

I almost gave that same old line.

Then I said, “Have you got a minute?”

And you said, “Take your time.”

No one ever told me I could feel this way,

Let the music hold what I couldn’t say.

All these words I never said

Coming up for air again.

Now I’m finding out what it means to be free,

Leaving room for who I’m still learning to be.

Hear me in the lights, hear me in the beat—

That’s my voice, and it belongs to me.

Still quiet sometimes.

But when I speak…

I let the sentence end.