I stared at the headline
like it might change eventually.
Heart sinking into my gut—
a burning truth
I wasn’t ready to bleed.

This can’t be real.
Not you.
Not the voice that taught me
how to scream without apology,
how to ache in rhythm,
how to fight through static.

You were the fire
in my headphones
when the world grew cold.
Now all that’s left
is silence
and a thousand questions
choking in my throat.

How dare you.
How could you just leave?
So many leaned on your sound
to stand.
Did you not see
how we followed you
through every lyric—
every crack in your roar
a crack in our cages?

You had it all.
A family who adored you,
children still learning
how to be whole.
A wife who held your storms,
fighting beside you.
And us—
millions
who clung to your words
like lifelines,
because they made our own chaos
feel understood.

You stood on top of the world
with the crowd beneath you
chanting your name.
How could you fall
from a place so high?

Selfish:
A name for pain,
disguised as betrayal.
We needed you.
We believed you were healing
alongside us.

Yet anger, like grief,
is just love
wearing breakable armor.

As I sat,
face buried in my hands.
I felt the truth rise
through the quiet that followed:

You carried a war
inside your bones.
A darkness louder
than any stage.
We never saw
the weight in your lungs—
how singing
sometimes felt like drowning.

You weren’t a god.
You were a man
with a gift and a ghost.
You held back the tide
for as long as you could
while pulling millions
to shore.

I write
I play
I sing—
because your pain
taught me how to feel.
Because your voice
made mine matter.
You were my beginning—
not of notes,
but of purpose.

Your story
stirred a reckoning inside me,
I turned my pain into melody—
refused to let the darkness
have the final word.
Seeing what you carried
and how it crushed you
pushed me to write of
life’s worth for those
still drowning.
If one heart finds meaning,
then the hurt becomes holy.

You shined
through broken glass
and burning wires.
Decades of thunder,
still echoed.

Now, 
I feel this more than ever.
Your voice still lives
in every soul you reached,
in every note carried on. 
It’s true—
I do care
if one more light goes out.