There are bodies in the street tonight
But no one says a word
Traffic hums like nothing’s wrong
Like nothing’s been disturbed
The lights still change, the shops still close
The news just looks away
And I’m choking on the silence
Of what we won’t say
I hear it in the empty space
Between what’s shown and known
A hollow in the broadcast
A fracture in the tone
You feel it if you listen close
A pressure in your chest
Like truth is being buried
And we’re told that this is best
How do you hold it all inside
And not come undone?
How do you carry all this weight
And still call it home?
The quiet is the loudest thing
It screams inside my head
All the words we never say
For all the unseen dead
What does it take to make it real?
How much must we ignore?
If this is what we’re living through
What are we living for?
They’re gathering them up again
Like history’s a script
Names erased, identities
Just numbers on a list
Put behind a fence somewhere
Out of sight, out of mind
Strip away their dignity
One piece at a time
And I see the faces turning hard
Hear the language shift and bend
“Less than,” “other,” “not like us”
Like we’ve been here again
The anger grows in crowded rooms
It festers, multiplies
And I don’t know what scares me more
The hate, or our disguise
How do you stand and watch it rise
And still feel okay?
How do you sleep through all of this
At the end of the day?
The quiet is the loudest thing
It echoes through the walls
Every silence screams consent
Every absence calls
What does it mean to look away?
What does it make of me?
If I don’t speak, if I stay still
Am I complicit too?
I am afraid of what we’re becoming
Afraid of how it feels so slow
Like rot beneath the surface spreading
While we pretend we don’t know
I am afraid of how it’s easy
To shrink, to turn, to close your eyes
To tell yourself it’s not your problem
While something vital inside you dies
I am afraid of all the history
That’s echoing inside these days
Of camps and trains and whispered warnings
We swore we’d never recreate
But the streets are still,
And the voices dim,
And the truth is a ghost we won’t let in
There are bodies in the street tonight
And I don’t know their names
But I feel them in the marrow
Like a sickness I can’t drain
And something in me is hollowed out
By everything I see
A space where hope used to live
Now filled with dread and grief
The quiet is the loudest thing
It tears me at the seams
All the things we will not face
Invade my waking dreams
How do you hold a breaking world
And not break with it too?
How do you keep your soul intact
When this is all you view?
I don’t hear a sound
Just echoes of a thousand truths
We’re burying in the ground
And I am left here wondering
What’s left that can be saved
When silence is the loudest thing
And fear is what remains.
