Hush now, traveler, the doorway widens,
a hollow carved by heavier hands.
Great voices linger inside its ribcage,
their echoes pacing like caged demands.
A warning hangs in the dust-lit archway:
enter only if you’re willing to grow taller than the ghosts.

Beware the gap…
where giants leaned their weight into the world,
and left a dent too deep for simple feet.
Beware the gap…
for stepping in means wrestling memory,
and memory fights dirty.

The past sits smug in its velvet chair,
firstborn of applause, heir to the crowd.
To match its voice? You’ll need double lungs,
to match its stride? You’ll need lightning vows.
Equal is lesser when the throne remembers
the first one who warmed the seat.

If you enter, enter burning
enter louder than the room expects.
The gap devours the timid;
it only spares the successor who surpasses,
never the one who merely repeats.

Old laurels whisper from dusty rafters,
singing hymns of “better days.”
Public opinion is a jealous creature;
it clings to the vanished,
adores the departed,
forgets the living challenger.
So bring new constellations in your throat,
new thunder in your step,
proof you deserve the hour that your predecessor warmed.

Oh, it’s a fine, sly art
to make them wish the old name back
but it’s finer still
to make them forget the old name ever walked here.
Erase the footprints, carve your own map,
rewrite the wind that carried him.

Beware the gap where giants sleep,
the hollow throne, the hungry keep.
Step inside with iron lungs
bring twice the fire the last one sung.
For equal is nothing…
and first possession is a crown with teeth.
Surpass or be swallowed.
Rise or be replaced.

And when you stand where he once stood,
let your shadow stretch beyond his boots.
The gap is filled, not by matching him
but by outrunning him
in every breath you breathe.