[Verse 1]
He came in like a doctrine handed down before you could speak,
A boy who learned that love meant silence, learned that truth was weak,
Two doors slammed behind you — one was God's, one was his,
And you locked yourself inside yourself just to survive all this,
The latch-key on the counter, an empty room, no name called out,
You raised yourself on questions that no father answered, full of doubt

[PreChorus]
But something hard-wired in your chest refused to go all the way down,
A fighter's pulse, a forward charge — you would not stay on the ground

[Chorus]
Joe, you were built from the fire they tried to bury in the floor,
Every blow that should have broke you made you want it even more,
Joe, you have carried borrowed shame that was never yours to own,
Now the man who walked through all of that is coming home

[Verse 2]
He handed you a mirror with his face cracked over yours,
Two decades of a phantom war fought behind someone else's closed doors,
He spoke first, spoke loudest, rewrote every room you stood in,
Made the witnesses turn their backs till you doubted where you'd been,
You kept the receipts in your bones when everyone else burned them,
Eleven years of excavation — you're reading every page he buried in them

[PreChorus]
You're exhausted, yeah — but exhausted men who press on are the ones who find,
That the further back the truth was pushed, the louder it speaks when it climbs

[Chorus]
Joe, you are not what they decided when you weren't in the room,
Not the villain of a story he invented for his own costume,
Joe, you held your ground with evidence written in your own hands,
And the truth doesn't need their permission — it stands

[Verse 3]
You dove into the depths where most men never dare to go,
Turned every locked room inside out just to understand the undertow,
The kind of love you're capable of — sharp, bright, a conversation burning live,
It asks for honesty, for open hands, for room enough to both arrive,
You swore you'd never hollow out another soul the way yours was hollowed,
That vow is still the truest thing — it's what every scar has followed

[PreChorus]
The Scorpio dark is breaking open now, and something beneath it won't stay down,
You've mapped the wreckage, named each room — now you're the one who builds the town

[Chorus]
Joe, every layer you've uncovered puts the legend back on straight,
Not broken — just a man who finally looked the whole thing in the face,
Joe, the forge that tried to flatten you just proved what you are made of,
You don't need to be forgiven — you need to be amazed at

[Bridge]
The boy who let himself back in after all those years outside,
Who stopped translating his own story through the mouth of someone's lie,
Who took the dogma and the damage and said: none of it defines me,
Now the only voice that sets the terms is the one inside — that's freely

[Outro]
Joe, you came back to yourself the long and brutal way,
And every truth you're still uncovering is another debt he has to pay,
This is your life returning — loud, defiant, and unmoved,
Joe, you were always real — now let the real man move