Mission Bag

Silk stage shimmer, velvet grin
Halo bright but paper thin
Curtain call with borrowed light
Spotlight soft as sleight of mind

Sugar glossed illusion dressed
Heartbeat sold as innocence
Hands wave high to hide the truth
Glass Eden cracking under youth

Warm light bending out of frame
Who decides what we can name
Tell me what is real, and when
Soft contradictions breathe again

Choreographed to seem unplanned
Every gesture second hand
Meaning whispered, then denied
Truth rehearsed but never tried

Mascara moon on trembling lashes
Fevered glow in mirrored flashes
Everyone wants love and blame
A spotlight built to dodge the flame

Warm light bending out of frame
Who decides what we can name
Tell me what is real, and when
Soft contradictions breathe again

Curtains shimmer with a borrowed glow
Truth gets filtered till it barely shows
Every spotlight hides a quiet bruise
Beauty staged in carefully chosen hues

Glass reflections bending what is real
Hands rehearsed in how they’re meant to feel
Honest faces buried under light
What we praise is never what we write

Silent rules we learn then keep
Costumes stitched in borrowed speech
Honest work in hidden places
Truth is braver without faces

Warm light bending out of frame
Who decides what we can name
Tell me what is real, and when
Soft contradictions breathe again

Glass Eden

We lean in like it’s gravity
Quarter light, shared vacancy
Skin remembers before the mind
Lonely hands keeping borrowed time

We don’t ask what the feeling means
Just trace it out in between the seams
Two warm bodies in borrowed air
Calling it love ‘cause it’s standing there

Is it love or the need to feel
Something warm that confirms it’s real
Is it touch or the fear of night
Holding whoever’s within our sight
Tell me why we’re closer now
Not by fate, but by here and how

We choose with our eyes half-closed
Hearts on autopilot mode
Same late trains, same corner store
Same tired thoughts we ignore

We don’t weigh it like diamond rings
Or engines built for decades of springs
We fall faster than we decide
Just to know someone’s at our side

Is it love or the need to feel
Something warm that confirms it’s real
Is it touch or the fear of night
Holding whoever’s within our sight
Tell me why we’re closer now
Not by fate, but by here and how

Late night talk in a dim same room
Future shaped like a quiet assumption
No great fire, no grand sign
Just two lives slowly aligning

We don’t ask if there’s more ahead
If somewhere else is a better yes
We settle into borrowed certainty
Calling comfort destiny

Sometimes I think in a different street
Different timing, different face to meet
Same heart maybe, different hands
Different map than the one I’m on

But thought drifts out, then circles back
To this warm weight in the dark I have
Not the best of what could be 
Just what keeps choosing me

Is it love or the need to feel
Something warm that confirms it’s real
Is it touch or the fear of night
Holding whoever’s within our sight
Tell me why we’re closer now
Not by fate, but by here and how

Maybe there’s more in another frame
Another life with a different name
But we don’t live in the endless spread
We live in what’s near, in what’s said

Hands meet first, the rest aligns
We call it meaning after the sign
Love arrives the quiet way
Not chosen first, just found midday

Love

Morning slips through a fragile pane
Dust on the clock, in a quiet lane
One small breath in a borrowed frame
Every heartbeat balanced on chance
Some are born with a silver door
Some with trouble on the kitchen floor
Some with songs in their throat at birth
Some with silence they wrestle for

Hush now, hold what you’re given tight
We only glow for a borrowed time
Play your hand in the fading light
Every life is a fragile line
Hush now, don’t ask why
Just drift with this lullaby

Some wear beauty like borrowed fire Some learn hunger before desire Some are wired for the open stage
Some push boulders their whole life long
You can bend every rule you know
Pray in rooms where the numbers glow
But the dice still rolls where it wants to go
Even when your hands are strong

Hush now, hold what you’re given tight
We only glow for a borrowed time
Play your hand in the fading light
Every life is a fragile line
Hush now, don’t ask why
Just drift with this lullaby

One small tilt and the table turns
Years of saving in seconds burn
Glass so thin where the future leans
Every dream on uncertain strings
Yet we still dress our rooms with light
Still make vows to the coming night Still plant seeds in a shaking ground
Still fall down, still rise somehow

Hush now, hold what you’re given tight
We only glow for a borrowed time
Play your hand in the fading light
Every life is a fragile line
Hush now, don’t ask why
Just drift with this lullaby

Lullaby

passion

Smoke in the window the morning still pale
Years in their lungs like a slow drifting veil
Bones thin as glass in a trembling frame
One wrong step and the floor forgets names
Jobs fold quiet like chairs in a dream
Lonely rooms learning new ways to breathe
We count our mercy in near missed fate
Call it a blessing when the fall feels late

Old hands shaking on pill bottle glass
Time pours thin in a paper cup class
Waiting rooms ticking in measured doubt
Calendars lie about running out
We don’t speak fear, we just tone it low
Lower our voices everywhere it goes
Tables stay set for ghosts in the chair
Faith in the salt and the folded prayer

Four slow legs in a borrowed pace
Eyes still finding my darkest days
Every goodbye like a dress rehearsal
Every return feels universal
Monthly needles, the daily pill
Love in routine, in stubborn will
He breathes like time is a loan to him
So I breathe like I owe it back again

Lights stay on but they flicker thin
Numbers hover where peace been
We rent our calm in 30-day grace
Pretend tomorrow already paid its place
Debt rides quiet in the passenger side
Hope steering slow with one good eye
We don’t look far, we don’t ask how
We just keep the house from falling down

Badges beep me through borrowed doors
Lucky breath on unstable floors
Reorg weather in clear skied rooms
Storms decide without warning who moves
Five years feels like fog in math
I can’t see the end from the middle path
No keys resting in my hand
No name stitched beside my plan

35 tracing circles in shade
Youth slips quiet like a late train gate
Some lives read like closed captions on
Written ahead while I’m still midsong
I wonder if the one missed a turn
Or just learned in another world
I leave the porch light soft and low
Hope dressed casual so it won’t show

No burning bush, no heaven split sign
Just another morning asking for time
Keep them breathing, keep him strong
Keep me working when nights feel long
If this is all the faith I own
Let it be enough to carry me home

Hold my quiet prayer
As I fold my fear and set it down
Carry what I can for now

Quiet Prayer

They met like rain on glass at night
Two blurred faces in borrowed light
He leaned in slow, she pulled away
Like both were scared of what they’d say
Cigarette glow on a sleepless street
Two tired hearts on uneven feet
They talked ‘bout everything, nothing real
Tracing fear they refused to feel

He read her silence like broken code
She held his hand, then moved it slow
Every touch was a question mark
Every promise a spark in dark

Don’t ask where this will go
Let it be enough for now
They hold on tight but still move slow
Love wears thin and fades with time
They pretend they’ll be alright
Borrowed hearts on borrowed time

They built their home out of maybe’s and when
Out of someday and back then
She danced close but kept one shoe on
He planned futures she’d never move toward
Every fight was a closing door
Every kiss still asked for more
They broke apart then ran back fast
Like reruns of a favorite past

Friends grew quiet, the room felt thin
Hope came late, left early again
Love looked brave but lived on doubt
Always half in, half way out

Don’t ask where this will go
Let it be enough for now
They hold on tight but still move slow
Love wears thin and fades with time
They pretend they’ll be alright
Borrowed hearts on borrowed time

From the outside it looked like fire
But the house was built on tired wires
They said forever like borrowed clothes
Wore it out, then let it go
She found silence somewhere new
He stayed talking to an empty room
He learned her ghost by the shape of sound
By the way her name fell down

Years pass soft like falling snow
He outgrew the man she’d never know
She became a passing song
Still plays when the lights go wrong

Don’t ask where it all went wrong
Let it rest where it fell apart
They had to let go when it got too loud
Love wore thin and drifted apart
They said they’d both be alright
Borrowed hearts on borrowed time

Borrowed Time

I pinned my wish to a paper wing
Threw it up where the cold winds sing
Blue looked wide from the edge of town
Now the tide’s all a darker sound
Maps I trusted were drawn in chalk
Wasn’t built for the way I walk
Still I feel it beneath my skin
Like a quiet race I was born to win

I’m holding on through the unknown
Through the highs I don’t yet know
What I want feels far, but true
Like a door I’ve never walked through
Odds stack tall like a loaded line
Still I bet on a crooked sign

Once the water was painted blue
Now it bleeds every shade but true
Every promise got priced in red
Every dream wants collateral instead
Crowded lanes where the future sells
Gold trimmed lies in familiar shells
I learned the weight of a dollar crown
How it bends every anthem down

I’m holding on through the unknown
Through the highs I don’t yet know
What I want feels far, but true
Like a door I’ve never walked through
Odds stack tall like a loaded line
Still I bet on a crooked sign

Some nights doubt sits in the front row
Claps real loud when the lights go low
Says be real, don’t aim so wide
Fold that hand, let the dream slide
But I still hear a wire inside
Pulling me past the safeland side
Every loss just redraws the route
Every silence sharpens the doubt

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I wait
Maybe the door just comes in late
But something moves when I don’t breathe
Like a thread still pulling me

I’m holding on through the unknown
Through the highs I don’t yet know
What I want feels far, but true
Like a door I’ve never walked through
Odds stack tall like a loaded line
Still I bet on a crooked sign

Crooked Sign

I'm Already There (Special Version)

I learned to live where the shadow stays
Not in the shine of the crowded days
They chased the sun till the edges burned
I kept the dusk and the lessons learned
They spoke in fire, I spoke in shade
Watched bold vows that the brave men made
They ran ahead where the spotlight gleams
I stayed behind with the in-betweens

Between lines, between signs
Between the lose and the almost mine
Between chance and design
Between the late and the right on time
Between loud and the quiet I keep
Between the climb and the reach I sleep
Between lines

They took the highway polished and wide
I took the street with the broken sides
They followed maps that were clean and clear
I learned the turn by the length of fear
Their miles stacked straight into clean escapes
Mine bent slow into narrow shapes
They crossed their bridges before they fell
I learned to read where the warnings dwell

Between lines, between signs
Between the lose and the almost mine
Between chance and design
Between the late and the right on time
Between loud and the quiet I keep
Between the climb and the reach I sleep
Between lines

They learned to shout till the room stood still
I learned the weight of the lower will
They hit the notes that demand the air
I hear the cracks that are never there
Their truth rang sharp like a stage confession
Mine stayed soft in the small inflection
They raised their sound till the walls took shape
I stayed where echoes learn how to wait

If I were louder I’d lose the thread
That ties the quiet to what I said
If I were faster I’d miss the seam
Where doubt turns into the deeper mean

Between lines, between signs
Between the lose and the almost mine
Between chance and design
Between the late and the right on time
Between loud and the quiet I keep
Between the climb and the reach I sleep
Between lines

Between Lines

Powerful acoustic soul singer/songwriter, award winning language teacher, world traveller, and lifelong yoga practitioner dedicated to the power of giving.


Kalvin Kim
Experimenting through genres and sound.

No DMs — email only.
📧 knghnkim@gmail.com
Spotify: open.spotify.com/artist/4rd79MhZV3Z8Z9j2bEOjLD

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