The Weight in Your Vest (Version 2)

Verse

Four hundred winters, stone beneath the ice

The horn sounds once before we lose our grip

You hand me the leather strap of my shield

Nothing left to prove but how we held it well

Two men against a mountain full of rage

The wind is speaking what I've yet to say

Your fingers laced through mine like a river's tide

We don't need words if we're standing side by side

I see the fear you learned from your father's name

But every heartbeat in this storm is tame for you now

I won't be the one to let it carry you under

You hold me up and I will stand for us too

Pre-Chorus

Is that a torch or just the edge of dawn?

Tell me how we keep from breaking when we're not alone

The mountain still breathes, but it won't move our ground

I feel your pulse against my palm, louder than this sound

Chorus

We carry what we cannot drop

Your weight in my vest is never a burden, it's us stopping before the fall

We don't break because that's how rivers start

The current pulls but it keeps us moving our heart

Verse 2

I remember every name on the wall of stone

Every ancestor who died for what they called home

You turn your face toward me through the freezing rain

And in your eyes I see all the names and none of their pain

A hundred winters, nothing to prove now

The land remembers everything we know how

We trade our breath so one can keep on standing

That's not courage, that's just what it means to belong here landing

Pre-Chorus

Tell me which mountain we climb at dawn

Is it yours or mine or the sound of us still being born?

I won't let go now no matter how loud it roars

This is how rivers find their own shores

Chorus

We carry what we cannot drop

Your weight in my vest is never a burden, it's us stopping before the fall

We don't break because that's how rivers start

The current pulls but it keeps us moving our heart

Bridge

If the snowdrift swallows me whole tonight

I know you'll be heavier than any light

No chain to bind you, no wall to hold tight

You're already a shield against the winter's sight

Chorus

We carry what we cannot drop

Your weight in my vest is never a burden, it's us stopping before the fall

We don't break because that's how rivers start

The current pulls but it keeps us moving our heart