The Living and the Lost

(Narrator : Jane)

Intro

The war had no single front,

no line the children could draw.

Some cities kept their windows lit;

some forgot the use of dawn.

Augustus promised order.

Helena promised time.

Each morning, those still breathing

counted what was left behind.

Verse 1

A shopkeeper covered his windows;

by morning, the shelves were bare.

A woman watched her savings vanish,

though she’d paid her share.

A neighbor named another neighbor,

with no proof and trembling hands.

One family left the building;

no one asked where they had gone.

The courts still opened in the morning,

the police still came when they could,

but fear ran faster than protection

through the neighborhood.

Chorus

We are here, we are alive,

holding what the flames let by.

If you hear us, say our names;

we are more than someone’s blame.

We are here. Don’t turn away.

We were living yesterday.

Verse 2

The hospital halls were crowded;

the wounded slept against the wall.

A nurse worked through the morning,

too tired to answer every call.

A woman came in after violence,

flinched at the closing door.

The doctor listened quietly

and asked her nothing more.

A father kept his daughter’s picture;

her chair stayed by his own.

A boy feared thunder overhead;

he’d learned that fear at home.

Chorus

We are here, we are alive,

holding what the flames let by.

If you hear us, say our names;

we are more than someone’s blame.

We are here. Don’t turn away.

We were living yesterday.

Verse 3

At three, the power failed again;

the backup cells ran low.

Samuel crossed the damaged district

where small fires marked the road.

He knew the wires, he knew the load;

he brought the hospital back.

Behind the glass, a child kept breathing;

a surgeon whispered, “Time.”

He called his family. The terminal

would not accept his name:

“Identity closed. Death confirmed.”

He tried. The answer stayed the same.

Bridge

The nurse stood close beside him,

showed the work his hands had done.

The officer said, “I know you’re here,

but I can’t undo what’s begun.”

Eleven times the papers came back,

eleven times the same mistake.

He looked down at his living hands:

“If I am dead, whose life did I save?”

Instrumental

Verse 4

I found an order signed by Augustus,

an older mark beneath the seal.

The world knew one face in the window;

I knew what the pages could reveal.

Aimé, erased from my own life,

ruled through the body they shared.

The record named a single ruler,

not the mind that had been there.

I kept the page. I called Carole.

Gyu-Young would test what could be known.

No accusation, not this morning.

The war was moving on.

Final Chorus

We are here, we are alive,

holding what the flames let by.

If you hear us, say our names;

we are more than someone’s blame.

We are here. Don’t turn away.

We were living yesterday.

We are here—say our names.

We are here. Don’t turn away.

Outro

The hospital lights stayed on.

Samuel walked into the morning,

alive to everyone who saw him,

dead to every door he tried.

Somewhere, someone waited for him.

“If I am dead,” he asked the day,

“whose life did I save?”