[Intro — free time, solo cello sul ponticello, no vocals] [Verse 1 — deep male narrator, spoken, slow deliberate pacing] [spoken, measured, like a verdict being read] You did not choose the neurons that fired. You did not choose the cortisol that flooded you at three years old. You did not choose the culture that carved grooves in your frontal lobe before you had a word for who you were. Every kindness was already written. Every cruelty was already written. The second the universe cooled enough to hold a particle, it held you. It held everything you would ever do. [Chorus — contralto voice, sung, slow rising string swell] [sung, low and wide, no vibrato, breath audible] There is no door. There is no key. Only the river, and the river was always going to reach the sea. Only the river. Only the sea. [Verse 2 — narrator, spoken, strings thin to near-silence] [spoken, quieter now, intimate] The judge who sentences was sentenced first by his amygdala — by a father's silence, by "led" paint in a Newark apartment, by the one neuron that misfired at the precise moment the gavel met the wood. There is no self behind the curtain pulling levers. There is only the curtain. There is only the levers, already in motion. [Chorus — contralto, fuller string ensemble, French horn pedal] [sung, deeper now, inevitable] There is no door. There is no key. Only the river, and the river was always going to reach the sea. [Bridge — free time, no melody, string cluster, prepared piano single tones] [whispered narrator over microtonal strings] This should feel like grief. It does feel like grief. That feeling was determined too. [Outro — contralto alone, a cappella, fading] [sung pianissimo, unaccompanied, unresolved] Only the river— [END — cut to silence mid-phrase, do not resolve]
