Lyrics

Still got your letter in a drawer I never open,

Yellowed edges, every word unspoken.

I thought you’d be the one to stay,

But life don’t care what hearts betray.

Every night since, I’ve poured a glass,

Talked to ghosts that never pass.

Tried moving on with someone new—

But no one ever felt like you.

Almost love, almost mine, almost real,

But never enough to truly feel.

The years just keep on dragging by,

And I’m still learning how to lie.

Loneliness—it ain’t just pain,

It’s thunder without any rain.

I needed warmth, I needed skin,

But I found the cold, again and again.

Had a few that came in close,

Some kissed sweet, some hurt the most.

But every time I gave a chance,

They’d slip away like circumstance.

I’m not young like I used to be,

Time’s a mirror that don’t lie to me.

I still wear this aching pride,

But it’s lonely being the man who tried.

Almost love, always near, never stayed,

Every promise just delayed.

Hands I held, eyes I chased,

Still felt like something was misplaced.

Loneliness—it digs so deep,

Steals your hunger, robs your sleep.

I needed fire, I needed truth,

But all I got was shades of youth.

I gave the best I had to give,

But I forgot how to really live.

Played the part, wore the smile,

But damn, it’s been a lonely while.

I thought by now I’d build a home,

But every road just leads alone…

The man I am, he waits, he bleeds—

But never gets the love he needs.

Almost love… my greatest lie,

Still chasing what I can’t define.

A name that echoes in the dark,

A memory that left its mark.

Loneliness—it’s carved in bone,

It’s knowing you’ll die alone.

I needed someone to call my own…

But all I found… was almost home.

Lyrics

Weve been friends for forty years, through storms and sunny days

Even with those empty miles, and roads that split our ways

We had to lose ourselves to find, the love we couldnt see

Now Im sittin here, just thinkin bout you, and what you mean to me

Cause Im the billboard of regrets, lit up in your rearview

Every smile and every tear still points my heart to you

That smile, those eyes, the perfect dream that never came to be

Memories lost to another man, whos just a shadow of me

And I sit and smile, cause your happiness is all I wanna see

I watch your life from far away, Ive seen you fight and fall

Ive seen you rise up strong again, and stand through it all

Sometimes I close my eyes at night, and drift in make-believe

Where youre here with me and weve got all the time we need

Cause Im the billboard of regrets, lit up in your rearview

Every smile and every tear still points my heart to you

That smile, those eyes, the perfect dream that never came to be

Memories lost to another man, whos just a shadow of me

And I sit and smile, cause your happiness is all I wanna see

I could tell you how I feel, but it might just break us down

So Ill hold it in and let the silence be the only sound

And if the Good Lords listening when I lay me down tonight

Ill pray He keeps you laughing, and your future shining bright

Im still the billboard of regrets, but Im glad youre doing fine

Even if it means this heart of mine stays somewhere left behind

That smile, those eyes, the perfect dream Ill never get to see

But Id trade my days, and all my nights, just to know youre free

And I sit and smile cause your happiness is all I wanna see

The Road, the Rain, and Revelation
—a reflection told in the winds of Copper Harbor

The morning rose behind a curtain of stormclouds—no fanfare, no golden fanfare from the east, just a quiet gray that draped over the Keweenaw like a woolen shawl soaked in sorrow. I was on my way to Copper Harbor, winding through the hills where pines whisper secrets older than our country. The road, usually a ribbon of calm, had become a serpent in the rain—slippery, coiled, and twitching with danger.

The heavens had opened like a grief-stricken heart, the rain falling not in drops, but in sheets—great veils of water slapping against the windshield as if trying to cleanse something I couldn’t name. The wipers worked like preachers in a revival—frenzied, relentless—but even they couldn’t keep up with the downpour. It was the kind of storm that makes the earth hold its breath.

Lauren Daigle’s voice rose from the speakers like a psalm cracked open. Her notes wrapped around my ribs and pulled something loose. I sang with her—not for show, not to pass time, but because the song had found something raw inside me. I didn’t know whether I was praying or pleading. I only knew I felt seen.

And then they appeared.

A doe and her three fawns stepped from the treeline like ghosts pulled from the mist. They didn’t run—they arrived. Majestic, fragile, untouchable. The mother stopped dead in the center of the road, and the babies followed, delicate as thoughts not yet spoken.

There was no time to think.

I jerked the wheel hard, a move that should have sent me spinning into a tree or worse. But instead, the car slid into the ditch as smooth as butter across warm bread. No jolt. No crash. Just silence. I sat there, breathless, heart hammering like a warning bell in a lighthouse storm.

“Fuckers!” I screamed—not in rage, but in that strange place between fear and awe, where language spills from the gut instead of the tongue.

I stepped out.

The air smelled of pine needles and wet soil, ancient and alive. The deer didn’t flee. They just looked at me. The smallest fawn—no taller than my knee—lifted its head. And I swear to you, it nodded. Not like an animal, but like a knowing. A gesture older than language. Then, one by one, they turned and slipped back into the woods as quietly as they had come.

I stood there soaked to the bone, rooted in mud and mystery.

It’s in moments like this—brief, blinding, holy—that I wonder if God speaks not through thunder or scripture, but through the pause between heartbeats. Through a song on the radio. Through four sets of silent eyes on a lonely road in the rain.

And sometimes, I believe… He does.