The Last Part of Me

[Two very low male voices]

[Cathedral acoustics, slow sacred harmony]

[VOICE I — humming]

Mmmmmmm—

[VOICE II — enters underneath]

Ooooooh—

[Both voices settle into a dark minor harmony]

[VOICE I]

Stay with me...

[VOICE II]

Just a little longer...

[VOICE II fades away while holding the note]

[VOICE I continues alone]

Mmmmmmm—

[Long silence]

There was a room inside of me

I never thought could close.

Somewhere I kept everything

I couldn't say aloud.

You were there

without me knowing.

Like a pulse beneath the floor.

Then they carried you away—

and I couldn't find

that room anymore.

Everyone said

I had to let you go.

But nobody told me

what would follow.

Nobody told me

the earth could take

more than

what we buried.

You took the last part of me

down with you.

The part that still believed

there was something left to lose.

Now I wake inside a body

that remembers what to do—

but the last part of me

went down

with you.

[VOICE I]

Stay with me...

[VOICE II — faint, almost inaudible]

Stay...

[Glitch / tape decay]

I still answer to my name.

Still put the keys

beside the door.

Still stand beneath the water

until I can't feel it anymore.

People tell me

I look tired.

They don't know

what they're seeing.

It's not that I stopped living.

It's that living

keeps decreasing.

[Low guitar drone enters]

A little less laughter.

A little less anger.

A little less reason

to explain.

Like watching someone disappear

without ever

leaving the frame.

I thought death belonged

to the person in the ground.

But some of us stay standing

while everything inside us

shuts down.

You took the last part of me

down with you.

The part that still believed

there was something left to lose.

Now I wake inside a body

that remembers what to do—

but the last part of me

went down

with you.

[Only the two voices return]

[VOICE I]

Are you there?

[VOICE II — distant]

...

[VOICE I]

Because I'm still here.

[Silence]

[VOICE I]

I think.

[Long reverb]

[Massive low guitar impact]

I WATCH MYSELF

GET SMALLER—

I HAVE TO WATCH IT

HAPPEN INSIDE.

[SUB DROP]

[EXTREME INSTRUMENTAL]

AND WHEN THEY LOWERED YOU—

THEY TOOK

THE LAST PART OF ME.

You took the last part of me

down with you.

Now every morning feels

like something I'm pretending to do.

And if there's anything still living

somewhere underneath—

I don't know

how to reach it.

I don't know

if it's me.

[Instruments slowly disappear]

You took the last part of me...

[VOICE II faintly returns for one word]

...with you.

[VOICE I alone, same melody as intro]

Mmmmmmm—

[Attempts to reach the harmony where Voice II used to enter]

[Nothing answers]

[VOICE I — almost whispered]

Stay with me.

[Silence]

[Long cathedral decay]