Oxygen Cathedral

Signal hits the room
Red light, white noise
Every dial wakes up
Every shadow has a voice

We were mapping dead planets
Making notes in crooked lines
Then the speaker split open
And sang in borrowed nursery rhymes

Doctor Vale dropped his coffee
Captain Reyes lost the chart
Something laughed inside the radar
With a slowly human heart

The planet that remembered us
Is calling from the dark
Turning every dead machine
Into a singing spark

The planet that remembered us
Has opened up its eye
And every star around it
Is too frightened to reply

Seven beats for orbit
Five beats for flame
Three for the child
Who keeps saying my name

Choirs in the ceiling
Sirens in the wire
The whole room rising
With a mouth full of fire

Oxygen Cathedral
Raise the copper spire
Let the old tape thunder
Let the black glass catch fire

If the planet remembers
Then the planet is not gone
Turn the signal louder
Let the next dream come on

Red light…
White noise…
One voice…
Then all…

We are not receiving…
We are being called…

Tap tap on the wire
Click click in the bone
The antenna turns slowly
Like it knows where to phone

We raised it after midnight
With rain inside the crane
Doctor Vale said nonsense
Then the needle kicked insane

There were numbers in the static
There were mouths inside the tone
And our own breathing answered
From a place we had not flown

Antenna
Tell me what you hear
Is it far away
Or terribly near?

Antenna
Bend into the night
Something in the blackness
Has learned to answer right

Three clicks for the living
Two clicks for the dead
Seven little planets
Knocking in my head

Antenna
Silver spine
Pull the dark
Into a line

Antenna
Do not fall
We are not alone
We are the call

Tap tap
Click click
Red light
Gone

The sun came on the radio
At twenty-three past two
Saying, sorry for the heatwave
I have misplaced the blue

We all stopped pretending
That the dials were in control
There was laughter in the speaker
There was sugar in the coal

Reyes tapped the window
Vale wrote nothing down
The signal wore a paper crown
And circled back around

Static from the dying star
Dancing in the dust
Not a warning, not a prayer
Just a little cosmic rust

Static from the dying star
Crooked, bright, bizarre
It is not the dark arriving
It is daylight from too far

Please hold for solar weather
Please mind the falling glass
Your childhood has been delayed
Your shadow needs a pass

Static from the dying star
Dancing in the dust
Not a warning, not a prayer
Just a little cosmic rust

Static from the dying star
Leave the channel scarred
Something old is smiling
In the engine of the dark

Static from the dying star
Fading through the wall
Static from the dying star

The moon was listening
Silver in the glass
Every word we whispered
Found another path

We spoke below the radar
Softly as we could
But the ceiling filled with moonlight
And the moonlight understood

Vale closed all the windows
Reyes turned the chair
Still the pale face above us
Kept breathing through the air

The moon was listening
With its ancient borrowed light
Keeping every secret
We had hidden from the night

The moon was listening
Cold and wide awake
And every little silence
Made the silver surface shake

No mouth
No hands
No mercy in the dust
Just a white eye over heaven
Learning how to look at us

The moon was listening
With its ancient borrowed light
Keeping every secret
We had hidden from the night

The moon was listening
Not distant, not asleep
It had our voices folded
In the craters of its sleep

Silver on the window
Silver on the wire
The moon was listening
To the oxygen choir

Earth was blue in the photograph
Then pale behind the glass
We watched it lose its edges
Like a face in winter grass

There were maps upon the table
There were names along the coast
But the ink began to wander
When Earth became the ghost

Reyes counted oceans
Vale held up a hand
The room was full of breathing
From a far-off empty land

When Earth became the ghost
It did not disappear
It moved into the wires
And whispered in our ear

When Earth became the ghost
It learned another form
A memory with weather
A shadow keeping warm

No grave
No throne
No kingdom made of light
Just every little window
Still shining in the night

When Earth became the ghost
It did not disappear
It moved into the wires
And whispered in our ear

When Earth became the ghost
We finally understood
A home can turn to silence
And still remember blood

Blue light on the ceiling
Old rain in the wall
Earth was not behind us
Earth was in the call

Air runs thin
Lights snap green
Someone shouts numbers
At the breathing machine

We built this chapel badly
With bolts and borrowed lungs
The ceiling keeps ticking
Like a clock with iron tongues

Reyes says faster
Vale says wait
The door starts humming
With a very bad fate

Oxygen Cathedral
Keep the pressure high
Everybody breathe now
Nobody ask why

Oxygen Cathedral
Copper in the wall
If the black room opens
Do not let it call

My hands taste silver
My teeth hear rain
There is frost on the window
Writing my name

The stars press closer
The floor bends wrong
And the air in my chest
Starts singing along

Four short breaths
Then seven more
One red shadow
Under the door

No saint
No bell
No holy flame
Just us and the pressure
Forgetting our names

Oxygen Cathedral
Keep the pressure high
Everybody breathe now
Nobody ask why

Oxygen Cathedral
Hold against the fall
If the dark comes knocking
Do not let it call

Air runs thin
Lights snap green
One last breath
In the breathing machine