[Intro]
[Instrumentation: one baritone-guitar chord sounds every five beats]

[Verse 1]
The mortuary lock resists,
Then opens with a metal click.
A strip-light stammers overhead,
White labels tied beside the dead.
No monitor divides the air,
No family waits beside a chair.
The refrigeration breathes
A colder rhythm underneath.

[Chorus]
This is the room where names go cold,
Where silver doors slide shut and hold.
Where every “case” regains a face,
And every number takes its place.
This is the room where names go cold—
Not gone, not solved, not growing old.

[Verse 2]
Door fourteen: Arthur Bell.
I know the photograph too well.
Door sixteen: Evelyn Quinn.
Two cups return beneath my skin.
Door eighteen waits for Gabriel,
A paper band, a wheeled steel shell.
Three separate rooms, one common thread:
Too few alive beside the dead.

[Chorus]
This is the room where names go cold,
Where silver doors slide shut and hold.
Where every “case” regains a face,
And every number takes its place.
This is the room where names go cold—
Not gone, not solved, not growing old.

[Instrumental Break]
[Instrumentation: bowed bass drags the three-note motif across sustained guitar feedback]

[Verse 3]
I sign the book at six oh three,
My handwriting does not look like me.
The porter asks if I’m all right;
I say the phrase we use at night.
He does not nod or turn away.
He says, “That answer has a grave.”
Then points toward the chapel wall:
“The ledger has room for them all.”

[Bridge]
I open Arthur’s silver door,
Not far, not long, just once more.
I say, “Anne asked if someone stayed.”
The cooling engine hums and shakes.

[Second Bridge]
I tell Evelyn her daughter came,
Though traffic kept her miles away.
I tell Gabriel, “The fault was known.”
Three truths delivered to the cold.

[Climax]
[Instrumentation: full drums enter for the first time]

No god descends through concrete stone.
No board of saints records their own.
So I speak each name until
The room becomes a chapel still.

Arthur Bell.
Evelyn Quinn.
Gabriel Reyes.
Write them in.

[Final Chorus]
This is the room where names go cold,
But cold cannot make silence whole.
Each silver door, each paper band
Will travel upward in my hands.
This is the room where names go cold—
Their names will reach the upper floor.

[Outro]
[Instrumentation: organ motif rises instead of falling]

The lock clicks shut. The hall light burns.
The dead stay still. The witness turns.