I kept thinking movement
was the distance between me
and everything I couldn’t face
Turns out
I brought it all with me
Dawn came thin through an industrial sky
One road going forward, seven worlds behind
Chapel dust on the shoulder of a coat worn black
Old motel key and a folded train map
Contestant number crushed in the side of my bag
Water-ring stain where the truth finally sat
Malik in the radio, low through the snow
Every voice that said leave
every voice that said go
I learned rooms from the back
learned roads from the rain
Learned a prize with your name
still belongs to the game
Learned command isn’t power
when the powerless freeze
It’s the hand on the door saying
Move when I leave
I was useful till useful
became all I could be
Kept a hundred people breathing
wouldn’t breathe for me
Now the skyline is quiet
no signal to obey
No one waiting for orders
Still I walk anyway
No crown
No finish line
No clean road
No perfect sign
I carry every version
I refused to leave behind
Still moving
even when the road runs out
Still moving
even with the lights shut down
No crown
No finish line
No perfect way through
I carried every version of me
And I’m still moving
Still moving
Still moving
Nothing behind me is wasted
Still moving
I came from the cable case, back-row shadow
Cold chapel stone and the low amp rattle
Then the highway sold me freedom in a motel light
So I chased every exit through the middle of the night
Met saints by the pumps, met lies by the mile
Met men selling maps with a dead-man smile
Hit the prize-floor bright with the contract clean
Till I held every clause to the camera screen
Then Tomorrowline shook when the station went blind
Had a hundred scared faces and a half-dead line
No captain, no signal, no official reply
So I cut through the lock and told everybody ride
Then Glass Water showed me the tremor in hand
All the grief I converted into something I could plan
Then the relay woke up with the names they erased
So I sent every voice through the wire into space
Now the tower is dead but the signal stays living
Every road took something, every road kept giving
Every mask, every job, every wound, every city
Every time I stayed hard when the truth wasn’t pretty
I don’t call that healing
I don’t call it fate
I call it showing up
when the next step waits
I don’t need the machine
I don’t need the applause
I don’t need to be pure
to be sure of the cause
I was never the saviour
never saint, never king
Just the man who kept walking
when they shut down everything
Still moving
even when the road runs out
Still moving
even with the lights shut down
No crown
No finish line
No perfect way through
I carried every version of me
And I’m still moving
I spent my whole life
trying to arrive somewhere
A room where nothing followed
A city that didn’t know me
A future without the weight
There was nowhere to arrive
There was only
the next honest step
So take it
I walk with the chapel
but I’m not in the back
Walk with the highway
but I don’t need the map
Walk with the number
but I’m nobody’s prize
Walk with the train light
still burned in my eyes
Walk with the water
and the name in the glass
Walk with the signal
that survived its collapse
Every ghost gets a seat
every failure gets room
Every person I was
gets to walk into noon
No dramatic escape
no parade at the end
No enemy waiting
no throne to defend
Just a road turning pale
as the night loses hold
And the weight on my shoulders
finally carried, not controlled
I started in the back
I crossed every line
I don’t need the front now
The road is mine