You Do Not Need the Map Anymore (Mentor-Mentee)

Lyrics

I found the first map today.
Tucked inside a book I thought I’d lost.
The ink is faded.
The coastlines are all wrong.
I remembered your face when you first asked for it.

You stood in the doorway of that ink-stained room,
shoulders broad enough to carry a world you hadn't met yet.
You didn't have the words, not then.
Just a fire in your eyes,
a question that burned the air quiet.
You asked me for a way through the dark.
All I had was this paper, this ink.
A few lines I’d followed myself.

And I told you, here is the path I took.
Here is the north I knew.
Trace it with your finger until the paper wears thin.
But the day will come, and it comes for us all,
When you look up from the page and see the real sky.
You do not need the map anymore.

I remember that day in the crowded hall,
the salt on the wind through the window.
It felt like August sixteenth.
Your voice, for the first time, not an echo of mine.
It was winged with a fire I had only tended.
And in that moment, the room wasn't a room,
it was a harbor.
And you were the ship, turning for the sea.

And I told you, here is the path I took.
Here is the north I knew.
Trace it with your finger until the paper wears thin.
But the day has come, and it comes for us all,
When you look up from the page and see the real sky.
You do not need the map anymore.

My teachers gave me maps drawn in sand.
They were gone by the next tide.
I gave you paper, something to hold.
But every harbor is also a cage if you stay too long.
Listen. That quiet hum inside you?
That's your own true north.
It was never on my page.
It was never mine to give.

Go on.
Draw your own coastlines.
Name your own oceans.
The world is wider than my ink.
Go on now.
You don't need the map.