Can anybody hear
Tell my daughter
North relay, channel seven
I hear you
Reached North Relay before the snow came down
Old transmission tower over one dead town
Windows boarded shut, rail buried in white
One generator coughing through the middle of the night
Gate had a warning stamped across the steel
System decommissioned
No records retrieved
But the wire overhead kept singing through the cold
Little human voices trapped inside the old
Caretaker met me with a lantern and a limp
Said, "The state cut funding, but the signal never quit"
Every storm brought fragments from the final evacuation
Names, room numbers, prayers, broken conversations
He led me underground where the relay cabinets stood
Black boxes blinking like they understood
Thousands of recordings waiting under dust
Every missing voice labeled
Corrupted
Do not trust
I put headphones on
He said, "Don't stay too long"
First voice said, "Mama"
Second voice sang a song
Third gave directions to a shelter that fell
Fourth only breathed
But I remembered him well
They called it dead air
They called it debris
But dead things don’t beg
To be remembered by me
Relay saint
Carry my name
Through the white noise
Through the flame
Relay saint
Don’t let it fade
Send me somewhere
I can still be saved
Wire to wire
Pain to pain
I hear the lost
Inside the rain
Relay saint
Carry my name
At two in the morning, government line came through
Voice clean and calm like clean voices do
Said, "Terminate archive, erase channel nine
Unverified testimony compromises design"
I asked, "Who gave the order?"
They gave me a code
I asked, "Who heard the messages?"
Silence on the phone
Caretaker looked tired
Said, "They come every year
Offer enough money to make memory disappear"
Then he showed me one file marked emergency red
Final train manifest with the living and dead
Ninety-eight passengers
Ninety-seven arrived
One line scratched empty
One name denied
Malik Cross
Car three
Last transmission received
I felt Glass Water
Rise underneath
Pressed play
His voice came weak through the storm
"Lucien, if you hear this
Keep the relay on
There are people in the tunnel
And the maps are all wrong
Tell whoever finds us
We kept moving on"
Seven seconds
That was all he left
Seven seconds hidden
Because the record said lost
Seven years of silence
To protect somebody’s cost
Relay saint
Carry my name
Through the white noise
Through the flame
Relay saint
Don’t let it fade
Send me somewhere
I can still be saved
Wire to wire
Pain to pain
I hear the lost
Inside the rain
Relay saint
Carry my name
A saint is just a person
Someone else refuses to forget
No halo
No miracle
Just one voice
Carrying another voice
Farther than it could travel alone
I opened every channel
Routed archive to the line
Sent names through the districts
One frequency at a time
To the chapel
To the highway
To the prize hall screens
To the train yards
To the glassworks
To every dead machine
The whole city woke
To the sound of the erased
Mothers heard their children
Lost workers named the place
Soldiers gave coordinates
Nurses listed beds
People called from years ago
To prove they had not left
Control screamed, "Shut it down
The relay grid will burn"
I said, "Then let it burn loud enough
For history to learn"
Tower lights rose white
Snow turned gold
Every cable shook
Every transformer rolled
Caretaker asked, "What happens
When the system overloads?"
I said
"Every voice gets out
Then nobody knows"
Relay saint
Carry their names
Through the white noise
Through the flame
Relay saint
Nothing erased
Send them everywhere
The truth can still be traced