Acoustic Shadow

[Verse 1]
The C-Line bus hisses steam at the curb,
it’s 9:08 on a Tuesday at the Silver Lake reservoir.
He watches her laugh, head tilted back,
a low-grade seismic event on the wrong track.
Her hand finds the voltage on some other guy's arm.

[Chorus]
And oh, the signal dies right there,
in the acoustic shadow, the dead air.
Do you warn a man his bridge is out
or just let the traffic reroute?

[Verse 2]
His thumb hovers over his best friend's name,
a drop of rain hits the glowing frame.
He said, “she’s a load-bearing wall” last July,
under that sodium-vapor sky.
Now he's diagramming the geometry of a lie.

[Chorus]
And oh, the signal dies right there,
in the acoustic shadow, the thin air.
Do you report the fissure in the ground
or just let the whole grid go down?

[Bridge]
The calculations run, the latency, the cost.
One clear transmission and two futures are lost.
The hum of the power lines overhead,
a circuit of things better left unsaid.

[Chorus]
And oh, the signal dies right there,
in the acoustic shadow, beyond repair.
Do you tell your friend his world is out
or just let the silence reroute?

[Outro]
The C-Line bus hisses steam at the curb.