I Loved You Enough To Leave

[Verse 1]
You were sleeping on my shoulder
Streetlight cutting through the blind
Coffee cooling on the counter
All those quiet warning signs
You were shrinking just to hold me
Folding pieces of your days
I kept calling it devotion
You just slowly slipped away
[Chorus]
So I loved you enough to leave
Walked out so that you could breathe
Tore my name out of your sky
So you could see your own life
Every step cut into me
But I loved you enough
I loved you enough to leave
[Verse 2]
You stopped singing in the shower
Stopped your paintings halfway through
Every dream you ever whispered
Started ending with “but you”
I was always in the center
Of a life that wasn’t mine
You were orbiting my weather
Starving in the shade I cast in time
[Pre-Chorus]
I saw the light go out
Each time I asked you to stay
Heard the future in the silence
When you had nothing left to say
[Chorus]
[Bridge]
I haunt the halls of what we were
[low vocal register] Your jacket on the chair
Your laughter in the mirror glass
Your ghost in every prayer
[whispered vocals] You’re waking up to windows open
Sunlight on your skin
Someone else will say “I love you”
And you won’t have to move for him
[crescendo] I’ll be the ache behind your freedom
The shadow you outgrew
The cost of learning how to live
Was losing me from you
[Chorus]

Slow-burning cinematic ballad with close-mic’d male vocals over sparse piano, low strings entering gradually. First verse almost a whisper, then cello and distant toms swell into a wide, emotional chorus. Subtle reversed textures and reverb tails create a haunting halo around the voice. Final chorus pulls back to near a cappella with gentle piano, then ends on lingering string harmonics., happy, raw, slow, male vocals, deep