soft piano, slow, unresolved chords)
[Spoken Intro]
I don’t know how to say this
without breaking open.
So I’ll say it the only way I know how—
true.
[Verse 1 – spoken]
I carried you longer than I was allowed to keep you.
That’s the sentence that never leaves my body.
I learned how to mother without hands,
without bedtime,
without a place in the room.
People think giving up is quitting.
They don’t understand
what it costs to let go
so someone else can live.
[Chorus – half sung, fragile]
From here, I love you.
From silence, I stay.
From the life I wasn’t given
I found another way.
I don’t need you to know me.
I don’t need you to choose.
From here, I love you—
that’s the truth.
[Verse 2 – spoken]
I only get pieces of you now.
A guarded voice.
A closed door.
I hear the distance in your pauses.
I feel the questions you don’t ask.
There’s a grandchild I love without holding.
A wedding I won’t stand inside.
Milestones that move forward
while I learn how to grieve quietly.
[Pre-Chorus – whispered]
I don’t blame you
for protecting yourself.
I know where that instinct comes from.
It came from me.
[Chorus – fuller, still restrained]
From here, I love you.
Through years I don’t touch.
Through conversations I don’t get
and moments I miss too much.
I don’t need forgiveness.
I don’t need a role.
From here, I love you—
with my whole soul.
[Bridge – spoken, breaking]
I didn’t disappear.
I didn’t forget.
I didn’t move on.
I carried you into every version of myself.
Every choice.
Every breath.
I loved you loud enough
to step back.
And that is the wound
I live with.
(piano drops to single notes)
[Final Chorus – fragile hope]
From here, I love you.
And maybe one day you’ll see
that everything I survived
was because of you in me.
If you ever wonder who I was
or why it went this way—
from here, I love you.
I always stayed.
[Outro – spoken]
You don’t have to understand me.
You don’t have to call.
You don’t have to open the door.
Just know—
you were never abandoned.
Not in my body.
Not in my heart.
Not once.
(piano resolves softly, unfinished)