Expired

And just when I age into getting it right

Why do I feel like I’m running on light

Finally pacing my steps with intent

Body keeps cashing the checks that I spent

Years in envelopes sealed by denial

Now they read back in a language of trials

Strongest I’ve stood but the fault lines speak

Foundation solid, still fractures beneath

Youth took interest I’m still paying off

Now at the peak where the air gets soft

Bad bets matured into aches I own

Compound interest in flesh and bone

Thirties invested in building control

Forties collect on the cost of the toll

Not mad at roads that twisted my fall

Just reading the signs at the edge of it all

No ghosts that haunt, just truths that remain

Lessons engraved in a permanent grain

This is the crest before gravity claims

Trying to stretch out the length of the frames

Live long enough to repair what I broke

Breath on a wire but I won’t go broke

Inhale the height before I descend

Still in the story, not near the end

For blood and the bonds I’ve spoken unshown

Body may crack but the will’s overthrown

Regrets move silent like wind through a name

No face to blame but they echo the same

Fell through the years now I climb with intent

Learning the weight of the time that I spent

Youth was a storm I mistook for the sky

Adulthood fog where I learned how to try

Now at a line that don’t show but I feel

Body sends signals my mind won’t reveal

Eyes on horizons that don’t stay still

Strong in the moment, negotiating will

Wild years wrote what I read in scars

Now I translate who we really are

Not throwing in to the comfort of quit

Stretching the second I currently sit

Hands on the rails while the pressure builds

Holding for those that my absence kills

This is the crest before gravity claims

Trying to stretch out the length of the frames

Live long enough to repair what I broke

Breath on a wire but I won’t go broke

Inhale the height before I descend

Still in the story, not near the end

For blood and the bonds I’ve spoken unshown

Body may crack but the will’s overthrown

Tired but fire don’t answer to rest

Fuel in the chest where the doubt used to nest

Rearview regrets lose shape in the light

Pain paid forward made value of height

Not racing time, just matching the pace

Making each second remember my face

And when it finally settles in clear

Strength and the ending arrive in the mirror

Standing on legs that remember the strain

Still moving forward in spite of the pain

Climbed every version of who I could be

Now I just hold what was given to me

Not stepping off of the edge of the view

Just learning how much I still have to lose

Clearer than ever, I see what it costs

Tired, but not what I used to be lost

Strongest I’ve been at the edge of unsure

For them… I endure

I ENDURE

I ENDURE

I ENDURE

I ENDURE

(I endure)

(I endure)

(I..)