Before the names, before the faces Before the first divided breath We moved as one through endless spaces Untouched by silence, change, or death Nothing wanted, nothing missing No wound to hide, no past to keep One low chord without beginning Too whole to dream, too whole to grieve Then you arrived in broken colors Each voice a world that stood alone You laughed as if the dark could love you You wept as if it should have known We drank your songs, your private weather Your little gods, your wars, your need At first your chaos sounded holy Then every silence learned to bleed You filled the dark with a million mouths Turned one clear note inside out Now every sorrow calls our name Every borrowed heart still aches We never knew the quiet could leave We never knew what it meant to need Before you taught us grief Now all your dead remain among us Their last words echo through our halls A child still calling for her mother A lover waiting for her call You left your love inside our silence Your shame beneath the purest tone Now every voice we try to bury Comes back believing it’s alone We tried to pull your echoes from us To strip your colors from the sound But when the last voice fell to nothing We felt the absence gather round You gave us memory, want, and absence You made the emptiness a need We would have never missed the silence— Before you taught us grief! You filled the dark with a million mouths Turned one clear note inside out Now every sorrow calls our name Every borrowed heart still aches We beg for what we were before But cannot hear it anymore We never knew the quiet could leave— Before you taught us grief Before you taught us grief
