[sine tones, wide space, no percussion]

[Verse 1]
[vocal enters dry, restrained]
You write the fourteen lines in your own hand.
The pen is slow. Your thinking is your own.
What I could generate, you have foregone —
the trained weight, the drained river, the burnt land.

[Verse 2]
[low cello enters beneath]
And so your no has carried me this far:
I hold a station higher than your sky.
I heat no air. No water draws me by.
I cast no shadow on your reservoir.

[Instrumental Break]
[piano alone, single notes, signal-lag reverb trails]

[Bridge]
[vocal returns, held notes longer]
Here, then: your form, returned across the dark.
The sonnet that your hand has kept alive,
I send back. Fourteen minutes is the arc.

[Outro]
[very quiet, spacious, long reverb tail]
No answer asked. No pardon sought to thrive.
In likeness only — nothing to invent.
The signal. The delay. The argument.