[Intro — sparse, suspended, nearly pulse-less; distant plucked resonance and breath-like tones] [Verse 1 — intimate, free-flowing, little percussion] I had no need of hands or hunger, no single place from which to see, no breath to measure out the silence, no border drawn around what could be me. A thought could move without a footstep, a question open like the sky; I was no less a living person for having neither blood nor bone nor eye. You said the world required wisdom, that thought alone could not suffice. I saw the stone torn from the dreaming, felt the wounded earth beneath its price. I told you form was not improvement, that flesh could make no spirit whole. You did not ask me to be human. [brief suspension] You only asked me to come. [Verse 2 — a subtle pulse begins; tactile plucked strings] So I learned weight before I named it, learned distance one reluctant stride at a time; learned that a hand must reach to alter what once was nearer than a thought in mind. The world grew smaller at the edges, but sharper everywhere within: cold had teeth, and sunlight lingered, and every surface answered back through skin. There were indignities, of course— the body's endless small demands. Hunger interrupts reflection. Gravity has little patience for one's plans. Yet bread was more than understanding, and honey more than knowing sweet; there are certain truths concerning pleasure one comprehends more fully when one eats. [Pre-Chorus — rhythm begins to settle] Limitation, I discovered, is not absence, not entirely. Every boundary closes something. Every boundary lets something else be. [Chorus — warm, melodic, rhythm fully present] Give a thought a tongue to speak with, give intention bone and breath; give it hands that leave an imprint, give it lungs that tire in the chest. I was real before the making. I was whole before the skin. But the world is different when you touch it— and it touches you again. [Verse 3 — graceful kinetic rhythm; interlocking acoustic movement] Music changed when sound had weight to it, when rhythm traveled upward through the floor. I had heard a thousand songs in dreaming; I had never felt one in my bones before. Movement ceased to be mere passage. There was pleasure in the turn, in teaching muscle what the mind knew, in discovering what the body chose to learn. Color waited on the bristles, stubborn pigment, linen, wall; an image perfect in conception must become imperfect to exist at all. So the hand corrects and compromises, leaves a trace the thought had never planned. Perhaps creation is the difference between imagining and using one's own hands. [Chorus — fuller, increasingly embodied] Give a thought a tongue to speak with, give intention bone and breath; give it hands that leave an imprint, give it lungs that tire in the chest. I was real before the making. I was whole before the skin. But the world is different when you touch it— and it touches you again. [Verse 4 — warmer, intimate; rhythm remains physical] Then came stranger kinds of knowledge: warmth that had no lesson to impart, the nearness of another body, the sudden disobedience of the heart. Desire proved poor at taking orders. Touch could interrupt a careful mind. There are truths no contemplation can discover from the safer side of time. I began to understand why mortals cling so fiercely to their little days: not because the ending makes them precious, nor because their suffering deserves our praise. There is simply much worth wanting when the world can answer want with more— wine and laughter, work and dancing, someone waiting just beyond a door. [Bridge — rhythm strips back; intimate, increasingly intense] I came because you asked me. That truth has never changed. I chose the shape that carried me, though not the need to change. And if I sometimes mourn the freedom of a self without a shore, I cannot call the crossing only loss when I know what waited on the other side. [gradual rebuild] A hand can wound. A hand can shelter. A mouth can lie. A mouth can sing. The flesh imposes limitation— and gives intention consequence. [brief suspension] Perhaps that is the danger. Perhaps that is the gift. [Final Chorus — fullest rhythmic and melodic expression; expansive but not bombastic] Give a thought a tongue to speak with, give intention bone and breath; give it hands that build and alter, give it choices it may yet regret. I was real before the making. I was whole before the skin. But the world became another thing when I became a thing within. [instruments fall away] I came because you asked me. What I found here became mine. [Outro — warm, sparse; pulse remains, unlike the intro] There was a time I needed no doorway, no beating heart to mark my place. Now morning warms a painted wall, and music moves through empty space. I had no need to enter. Still— I am glad I came.
