Answered in My Own Voice

Lyrics

[Intro]
The café is called The Last Echo.
The sugar is silver dust in a glass bowl.
Across from me, the porcelain is perfect.
A head, a face, with nothing on it.

[Verse 1]
The skin is smooth as a polished stone.
No divot for an eye, no line for a mouth.
Just the quiet hum of a shape where a person should be.
It doesn't breathe. The air in here is borrowed from a library of silences.
My own reflection swims in the still black coffee.
I try to see my eyes, but there's just this mannequin, sitting. Waiting.

[Chorus]
I leaned across the table, the wood was cool and grey.
And I asked it, “Who are you?”
The air thickened. The silence folded.
And it answered me in my own voice, clear as a silver bell.
It answered me, with my own question.
“Who are you?”

[Verse 2]
I needed the check. The test.
I looked at my hands, they seemed right. Five and five.
Then I looked at the menu on the table.
It had only one word, printed in recursive, infinite text.
It was my own name. I tried to read it and the menu read me back.
The letters shifted, became a map of this room.
This room with one table.

[Chorus]
I leaned across the table, the world was cool and grey.
And I asked it again, “Who are you?”
The stillness fractured.
And it answered me in my own voice, a perfect echo of my doubt.
It answered me, with my own question.
“Who are you?”

[Bridge]
And then a tremor.
A smile I couldn't see but felt on my own lips.
A shared joke without a punchline.
A breath. A chuckle. The sound cracked the porcelain quiet.
It started in my throat, but came from its smooth face.

[Outro]
And we both started laughing.
And the laughter broke from our mouths as birds.
Not flesh, but folded paper, silver-creased sparrows.
They beat against the windows.
The glass didn't shatter, it peeled away into sky.
And my voice, from the outside, called my name.