Lyrics

# **HAVE YOU SEEN HIM**

**Hook — Low, Smoky Vocal**

Have you seen him?
He got my eyes and my last name
Mama says I walk just like him
But she won’t speak about the pain

Have you seen him?
Tell him his little boy got grown
Spent my whole life asking strangers
Why my father never came home

Have you seen him?
Have you seen him?

**Verse 1 — Restrained Melodic Rap**

First time I heard his nickname
I was standing by the corner store
Old heads started trading stories
Like they’d told those lies before

Said he drove a candy-painted Chevy
Had three women on the west
Could borrow money from a stranger
Then disappear before the debt

They smiled like that was legendary
Like neglect made him a king
I stood quiet with his features
Trying not to feel a thing

Mama worked two different shifts
Kept the power from getting cut
Made one plate divide between us
Then said she wasn’t hungry much

Every birthday near midnight
I watched headlights cross the blinds
Thought one car would stop outside us
But they passed us every time

**Hook — Ghostly Background Harmonies**

Have you seen him?
He got my eyes and my last name
Mama says I walk just like him
But she won’t speak about the pain

Have you seen him?
Tell him his little boy got grown
Spent my whole life asking strangers
Why my father never came home

**Verse 2 — Conversational Confession**

By sixteen, I started copying him
Without knowing I had learned it

Had two girls waiting on promises
Then blamed them when they questioned

Every time love asked for effort
I got distant, changed the subject
Called disappearing independence
Like abandonment was nothing

One night Mama caught me leaving
While my girl cried near the gate
She said, “You looking for your father
While becoming him each day”

That sentence hit beneath the anger
Made me sit inside my shame
I had spent my life condemning him
Then gave his habits my own name

Blood can carry someone’s features
Blood can carry someone’s fear
But it can’t command your footsteps
Once the truth becomes sincere

So I called every girl I wounded
Didn’t ask them to forgive
Said, “I finally see the damage
In the way I chose to live”

**Bridge — Cracked Notes, Breathy Pauses**

Have you seen him?
Don’t tell him I need revenge

I just need to see the man
Who taught me absence from a distance

Have you seen him?

**Verse 3 — Weary Singing into Rap**

Found him near a bus station
Holding everything he owned
Same eyes looking back toward me
But the greatness stories told was gone

He said, “You must be my boy”
Like he’d only missed a week
I said, “I became a man without you
Now you barely get to meet me”

He blamed poverty
Blamed his father
Blamed the streets and being young
Said he always meant to find me
But intentions never come

I asked, “Did you know my birthdays?
Did you know Mama almost broke?
Did you know I learned your history
From men standing near the store?”

His hands began to tremble
He said, “Son, I lived afraid”
I said, “Fear can explain your leaving
But it cannot raise what stayed”

I didn’t hug him
Didn’t strike him
Didn’t beg for years returned
Just told him, “What you left unfinished
Was the reason that I learned”

Learned a father ain’t a title
It’s the mornings you remain
It’s correcting without crushing
It’s protection without chains

Then I turned and left him sitting
With the truth he couldn’t dodge
For the first time, I quit searching
For myself inside his flaws

**Final Hook — Layered Requiem Harmonies**

Have you seen him?
Tell him his little boy survived
Took the emptiness he handed me
And built a different life

Have you seen him?
Tell him I don’t need him home
I found the man I searched for
When I chose not to become him

Have you seen him?
Have you seen him?

I stopped looking
When I found me

**Outro — Near Whisper**

For years, I thought finding my father
Would explain who I was.

But he was only one chapter.
Mama was the whole foundation.

And the man I became
Was built from every night
She stayed
After he left.

So no…

I’m not searching anymore.

I carry his face—
but his absence
ends with me.