[Intro]
Pause the game. Save point. Alright.
Heard most of it — this house carries sound, and she testifies with the volume up.
There's coffee in the pot downstairs. Real coffee. This house doesn't stock the other thing.
Sit down. You want the last verdict in the building. Here it is, and it's not the one you want.
[Verse 1]
First, what's true, 'cause you've both earned straight answers:
You're both worthy. I don't say that loose.
And she's right — the math she did down there is math I've never said out loud:
nobody's everything. Not her. Not me. Not either of you. Completions, she said. She's right.
But now the part she left for me, because it's mine to say,
and I want you to hear every word of it before you sign anything with your lives:
Look at me. No — actually look.
You're not seeing what you think you're seeing.
[Verse 2]
You see the room adjust when I walk in. I see a man on the back half.
Every measure I own is against a version of me you never met —
and against HIM, I'm a burned-out old man. That's not modesty. That's bookkeeping.
Sure — the people qualified to judge still get it wrong in my favor. Fine.
Not as good as I once was. Good once, still, as I ever was. That's the whole remaining inventory.
And here's the arithmetic nobody brings to a kitchen speech:
I will never be more than I am tonight. Less capable. Less healthy. Less ALIVE. Only direction left.
You'd be signing up to watch the last half of a life
from the first half of yours.
Her too — she's not forty, and she's marrying the downhill and calling it a view.
At least she knows. Now you know.
[Chorus]
Provisional — every good thing I've ever held
Held like a morning: grateful, working, gone by dark and re-earned by dawn
There's no seat. There's no crown. There's no version of me that gets younger.
Nobody gets picked here — people pick themselves, daily, with their hands, eyes open
And if you stay, it doesn't get easier. It gets familiar. Familiar's better. Easy quits.
But stay for what's HERE, not for what you've built in your heads —
Provisional
(...that's not a warning. It's the only honest invitation I've got.)
[Verse 3]
So think hard about what you're actually asking for.
Not tonight — midnight answers run soft. Monday. Seven thirty. With your hands.
And keep thinking about it every Monday after, because I'd rather lose you both honest
than keep you on a misunderstanding.
You've got the right to line up — anybody does — and if her place ever opened, God forbid,
you'd have the right to make your case like you made it tonight. Might even be good for you.
But don't you dare waste your twenties and thirties holding a place in a line
for a man who's only ever going to hand you less than he's handing you now.
If you stay — and I'd be glad, I'll say that plain, glad —
stay because Monday itself is worth it. The iron, the work, the table, the people.
Not for a seat. Seats are for waiting. Nobody waits well. Build instead.
[Verse 4]
Last thing, then the game's calling and the coffee's getting cold:
I've been where you are. Both places. Wanted a room that might not have me — that was a decade.
Ran a record that was mostly bookkeeping — that was another one. It's mileage, not wisdom.
And what I know from the mileage is this:
the six words don't retire. What are you trying to accomplish —
answer it at twenty-six, answer it again at thirty-four, answer it at fifty-two on a mezzanine
with a paused game and two brilliant women asking you for something you can't grant.
My answer tonight? Breakfast. Monday. Biscuits from scratch, gravy from scratch, real coffee.
Everything in this house is provisional except the recipe.
Now go home and sleep on all of it.
(...both of you. And hey — good cases. Best I ever heard. That part you keep.)
The_SCAR
