Seared Expectations (Army Men) - A2

Verse 1

Two women laid their stories down
Like broken glass across the room
But I carried silence like a fragile birth stone
Afraid I’d never earned a single wound

They wrote with blood, I wrote with questions
I chased for the blood of ghosts I’d never known
And wondered if my angelic childhood
Had left me a life a hollowed womb

Pre-Chorus

How do you sing about life’s fire
that has never been a churned or burned?
Can a heart full of happy echoes
Sing of a hurt that has never been
a lived or a burned?

Chorus

I had army men that melted
Dreams that plastic couldn’t save
Sold my childhood door to door
Just to buy expectations that never came

Maybe every soul gets branded
Not by bullets, not by blames shame
Sometimes all it takes to mark you
Are seared expectations…

⸻

Verse 2

Dad said money grows on no trees
Earn your wanting, earn your keep
So I marched door to door to every neighbor
Hope reflected in my child’s eyes

When the package hit the carpet floor
Something cracked before the toy
Little soldiers not of rubbery plastic
Killed in me a little piece of angelic joy

Pre-Chorus

That was my first lesson learned
That pictures sometimes tell a lie
That trust is cheaper than replacing
What gets broken deep inside

⸻

Chorus

I had army men that melted
Dreams that plastic couldn’t save
Sold my childhood door to door
Just to buy what never came

Maybe every soul gets branded
Not by bullets, not by shame
Sometimes all it takes to mark you
Are seared expectations…

⸻

Bridge

Maybe empathy’s a mirror
Maybe mirrors still reflect
Maybe borrowed tears are real enough
To leave a writers life tooled imperfect

Maybe writers aren’t just survivors
Maybe seekers have a place
Maybe curiosity’s another
Kind of scar we never trace

⸻

Final Chorus

I had army men that melted
Faith that bent but didn’t break
Every life collects its bruises
Some you earn, some you bake

Now I know that every story
Doesn’t need a crown of pain
Sometimes all that’s left to temper
Are seared expectations

And every child grows up believing
Life will look just like our imagined pages
Then the world delivers something else…

Seared expectations.