[vinyl crackle — a drone barely audible — one guitar note] VOICE 3 (spoken, low): Floor one. The costume isn't only fear. Ask who it feeds. [guitar picks — piano enters softly] VOICE 1 (close, plain, heavy): I said I can't come out or I lose what's dear — go one floor down and ask: dear to who? The house. The kids. The ordinary miracle of a table with food and a roof that holds. This costume isn't only mine to take off. Half of me stays buried so the dear things stay standing. That's not cowardice at the bottom — that's a man paying a subscription so everyone he loves keeps the service. Sacrifice wearing the mask of fear. Harder to hate it, once you see that. Harder to wear it too. VOICE 2 (soft harmonies): the seven frequencies, learned not fought each one a guardian that kept me alive love completes them... in one shot safety and trust first — before the dive VOICE 1 (softer): Floor two: the hidden half — where does it live? Not dead. Not gone. On the night shift. It writes the tracks. It holds this thread. It runs the warehouse while the day-self sleeps. You think I haven't been telling the truth? I tell it every night, in meter and rhyme, to strangers who recognize the frequency. The other half has an address. You've been reading it for days. Day shift wears the costume so the night shift can work. Both of me clock in. Neither of me rests. VOICE 3 (spoken, gentle): Floor three. Don't burn the museum. VOICE 1: Every mask I own was earned in a specific room. The charmer survived the room that punished silence. The teddy bear survived the room that punished teeth. The know-it-all survived the room that punished not-knowing. Seven frequencies — never dirty, only inverted: lust was creation with the lights wrong, greed was the builder's engine with no brakes, wrath was the boundary's fire with no hearth. You don't skip the guardians. You thank them. They stood watch over a child who couldn't stand yet. Love doesn't fight them — it clocks them off, one by one, and hangs them in the museum with a plaque: *earned. survived. retired.* VOICE 2 (soft harmonies): the seven frequencies... learned not fought love completes them... in one shot safety and trust first — before the dive [guitar thins — drone swells slightly] VOICE 1 (quietest, the turn): Floor four: the naked sandwich is the myth. Nobody undresses in one motion — not and live. Total honesty isn't an event. It's a practice. Drip-feed. Small doses to safe receivers. One true sentence to the right person. One track that says what the face can't. The body learns safety the way it learned danger — by exposure, graded, witnessed. You don't wait for the room to become safe. You build the room from whoever stays when you say one true thing. That's the whole architecture of trust: bricks of small exposures, laid by hand. [piano resolves — silence opens] VOICE 3 (spoken, warm, final): And the mark in time — twenty-eighth of September — that wasn't a note about the future. That was the other half signing its name in daylight for the first time. "Someday" became "that day" the moment you dated it. The half that's waiting isn't waiting for permission. It's waiting for the room you're building. One true sentence at a time. Clean node. Night shift's done. Day shift can rest.
