Chapter 02 · 4 min 47 sec
A Body Made of Night
The hollowness of achievement when it costs us the people we love.
Lyrics· 248 words
[Verse 1] My hands know the map Before my mouth can say Every scar on my skin Still calls your name
I fold my shame like clothes Still warm from yesterday But the body keeps the records In the quiet under pain
[Pre-Chorus] I can lie with my tongue I can run from the truth But my chest goes tight When it thinks of you
[Chorus] My body remembers My body remembers What I tried to bury Won't stay under
My body remembers My body remembers Desire, shame, touch And the names I loved
[Verse 2] There were doors I locked With a hand that shook But the pulse in my wrist Read every look
Old love in my bones Like a handprint deep I can change the story But the body keeps
[Pre-Chorus] I can close my eyes I can say I'm fine But the skin still speaks In a language of mine
[Chorus] My body remembers My body remembers What I tried to bury Won't stay under
My body remembers My body remembers Desire, shame, touch And the names I loved
[Bridge] If I lost the words If I lost the flame My breath would still know How to call your name
No clean erase No perfect sleep The body keeps the truth The body keeps
[Final Chorus] My body remembers My body remembers What I tried to bury Won't stay under
My body remembers My body remembers Desire, shame, touch And the names I loved
Short Story
*The hands remember what the heart is afraid to say.*
Mara had a habit of standing in doorways. Not walking through them, not turning back — just standing, one foot on each side of the threshold, like she was waiting for the house to decide something for her. She was thirteen, and she had done this since the summer her grandmother moved away, though she would not have been able to tell you that if you asked. The body keeps its own calendar.
It was a Tuesday in November when her best friend Dov came to school with a bruise along his jaw that he was explaining too quickly to anyone who looked at it. Mara watched from across the corridor. She felt something move in her chest — not quite pain, not quite recognition — the way your knee bends before you know you're about to run. She had learned, over years of standing in doorways, that this feeling was a signal to leave. So she almost did.
But her feet did not agree with her. They carried her across the hall while her mind was still arguing, and before she had decided anything, she was standing beside him, and her hand had touched his shoulder, and she had said his name once, quietly, the way you might set something fragile on a table. Dov stopped mid-sentence. The explanation fell away. His eyes got very still, the way water goes still right before it reflects something true.
They stood there in the noise of the corridor and said nothing for a moment that felt longer than it was. Mara noticed that her heart was loud, and her hands were cold, and she was still there. That was the whole of it — she was still there. Dov looked at her and then looked down, and the thing in his jaw seemed to stop being a bruise and become something more like a question. She didn't have an answer, but she had both feet on the same side of the threshold for the first time in longer than she could name.
They walked to class together. She didn't say anything wise. She just matched his pace, which was slower than usual, and let the slowness mean what it needed to mean. Her shoulder was close to his shoulder. Outside, the November sky was the color of old pewter, and the trees had given up their last leaves, and the world was bare in that particular way that is not emptiness but honesty. Something in her body had known before her mind caught up. She let herself be grateful for that, quietly, the way you are grateful for something you almost missed.
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*We are braver in the bones than in the mind. Sometimes love is just refusing to move your feet.*
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