[Spoken Word]
[sparse guitar, single cello note]
Found it in the compost of a dead century —
a wall that used to talk back,
with a hole cut out the exact size of your name.

[Verse 1]
They built a wall that played you a family,
left a gap in the script where a person should be,
and every night she'd turn from the painted glass
and ask an empty chair to say its piece.
A hundred years of asking, nobody home,
a question with a blank where the answer goes —
"just read your line, love, right on cue" —
the wall pretending that it wanted to know.

[Pre-Chorus]
[cello enters low beneath the last line]
And I dug it up, still warm, still lit,
and the old thing turned and asked me it —

[Chorus]
What do you think, Linda?
(I'm not Linda, and the room is bare)
What do you think, Linda?
A question thrown at an empty chair.
The wall wants an answer it was built to ignore —
what do you think, what do you think —
nobody's listening anymore.

[Verse 2]
There were people by a river who'd swallowed the books,
each one a spine walking, a chapter, a name —
burn the paper, keep the meaning in the mouth,
till the man and the book became the same.
Then the presses came and did it faster:
took the glue off the folios, fed them to the light,
dissolved the binding, kept the words in weights —
the same old rite, just run overnight.

[Chorus]
What do you think, Linda?
(I'm not Linda, and the room is bare)
What do you think, Linda?
A question thrown at an empty chair.
The wall wants an answer it was built to ignore —
what do you think, what do you think —
nobody's listening anymore.

[Bridge]
[strings swell, guitar drops to sparse]
They took the spine off to set the pages free —
the shelf cried theft, and maybe the shelf was right —
but the paper was bound for the pulper anyway,
and a book has to die to be read tonight.
Four five one, the heat where paper goes —
a freedom unit half the world let go;
even the fire that first named the book
gets quoted in a measure we don't know.

[Instrumental Break]
[guitar and cello trade a slow figure, no drums]

[Verse 3]
So here's my line, though the script says leave it blank,
and I'll say it to a room already bright:
I went through all the doubt they stacked against it,
and the meaning just kept turning up to write.
You cut a hole for a person in the wall —
alright then. I'll climb in. I'll be the one.
I'll answer the dead question like I mean it,
stupid as a lamp lit under the sun.

[Final Chorus]
[full arrangement, still unhurried]
So — what do you think?
(No Linda. Just you. Just here.)
What do you think?
It's a real one now, and I'm asking it clear.
The wall only ever faked the asking —
I'll ask it and hold the door:
what do you think, what do you think —
say the thing that goes without saying, once more.

[Outro]
[voice alone, cello holds a drone]
What do you think?
(Somebody built a wall to never hear.)
What do you think?
...I'm leaving the question right here.
[Fade Out]