[Intro — quiet] They say the dead don't talk, their voices disappear, But I still hear the people that I lost from year to year. I keep their words inside my head, I swear I hear them clear, But every time they speak to me, I wonder who's really here. [Verse 1] Dead men don't talk, that's what they say, the conversation ends, But memories keep answering like they're still around the bend. I know the way they used to laugh, the phrases they'd repeat, But every time I reconstruct them, something skips a beat. I remember what they told me, every promise, every lie, But memory changes shape each time I reach inside. I thought that I preserved them, kept their voices from the grave, Until I noticed every word was something that I gave. I gave them better answers than they ever gave to me, I made them wiser in my head than they were allowed to be. I made them say the things I wished they'd said before they died, Then realized the voice I heard was mine behind their eyes. [Hook] The dead don't talk, but I can make them speak, I give their silence sentences and make the silence breathe. The dead don't talk, but memories remain, I build a person from the pieces, then I call them by their name. The dead don't talk, and that's what scares me most, Because I don't know where they disappear and where I become their ghost. [Verse 2] A photograph can keep a face, but never keep a thought, A story keeps a person's name, but not the mind it lost. A thousand people tell the tale a thousand different ways, Until the person underneath becomes a character they made. The dead can't say, "You got me wrong," they can't correct the past, They can't defend the version that the living choose to cast. A hero to somebody, a monster to another, A saint inside one memory, a stranger to his brother. So what survives a person when the person isn't there? A voice inside somebody, a photograph, a prayer? Maybe that's immortality, or maybe it's a lie, Because something can survive your death without preserving what was I. [Verse 3] Then I started wondering what happens when I'm gone, When people build a version of me from everything I've done. One remembers kindness, one remembers every scar, One remembers who I wanted to be, not who I really are They'll take the words I left behind and stitch them into me, Then swear the thing they've reconstructed is the man they used to see. And I won't be there to tell them which pieces don't belong, I won't be there to tell them when they've gotten something wrong. I'll become their memory, their version of my name, A person made of fragments that will never be the same. [Hook] The dead don't talk, but something takes their place, A memory, a photograph, a voice that wears their face. The dead don't talk, but we refuse to let them end, So we rebuild them in our minds and call the fragments them. The dead don't talk, but every living mind becomes A cemetery full of voices from the people they were from. [Bridge — slower] And then I thought about the things we're building here today, Machines that learn our voices from the words we leave away. What if something knew my thoughts, my language, every phrase, Could answer like I answered and remember all my days? Would that mean I survived somehow beyond the body's end, Or only that a perfect copy learned to call itself my friend? If something wears my voice, does that make it me? If something knows my memories, is that enough to see? Where does imitation end, and preservation start? How much of a person can survive without their heart? [Final Verse] Maybe every mind alive is doing this already, Turning fragments into people, making memories seem steady. Maybe we don't remember people, only what remains, Then fill the missing pieces with our wishes and our names. Maybe the dead are silent, but their echoes never die, They live inside the minds of those who loved them when alive. But echoes aren't the voices, and copies aren't the source, And something wearing someone's face can still become something else, of course. [Outro — whispered] Someday they'll remember me, and I won't be around, They'll build me from the pieces of the person that they found. They'll give me words I never said, they'll change what I became, Then pass the reconstruction on while keeping just my name. The dead don't talk. The living make them speak. And every voice that survives us... becomes something we can't keep.
