“Waiting” by Samuel E Burns

Samuel E Burns’ “Waiting” is a haunting meditation on love, loss, and the unbearable silence that lingers after someone you can’t let go of is gone. The lyrics drift like a slow echo through time, full of longing and resignation, giving voice to the universal ache of waiting for something—or someone—that may never return.
From the opening line, “She was my silver lining, / I can’t help myself,” Burns captures the essence of yearning with raw simplicity. The speaker is caught between memory and reality, between the desire to move on and the inability to do so. The refrain “Waiting” becomes a heartbeat—steady, lonely, and unrelenting—marking the passage of emotional time as much as literal time.
The imagery throughout the song is dreamlike and introspective: “Lost in space and time,” “Left my body somewhere / Just watching it float.” These lines evoke a kind of emotional weightlessness, as if the narrator is drifting through the remnants of what once was. The repetition of “Waiting” after nearly every verse deepens this sense of suspension; the word becomes less an act of patience and more a state of being. The narrator isn’t just waiting for someone—they are waiting, embodying the emptiness itself.
There’s also an undercurrent of bitterness beneath the melancholy. In lines like “She no angel, / She’s no saint, / Just all trouble,” the narrator seems to oscillate between blame and longing, torn between recognizing the pain she caused and still wanting her back. That emotional contradiction makes the song feel deeply human—raw, imperfect, and honest.
Musically (as one imagines it), “Waiting” would lend itself well to a slow, bluesy ballad or a stripped-down acoustic performance. The rhythm of the repeated lines mimics the cyclical nature of grief and longing; every time the song seems to resolve, it circles back to the same place: still waiting. The emotional climax isn’t a grand revelation—it’s the quiet acceptance of emptiness in the final stanza:
“Still waiting,
For a sign,
For a sound.
For someone to call,
Or let me drown.
But I’m still here.”
That moment lands with devastating simplicity. There’s no closure, no redemption—just the persistence of the heart that refuses to stop hoping.
In “Waiting,” Burns delivers a piece that feels both timeless and deeply personal. It reads like the final confession of someone trapped in the echo of love’s aftermath—aching, remembering, surviving. It’s poetry for anyone who’s ever stared into silence, hoping it might speak back.