Chapter 08 · 4 min 16 sec
Hard Techno Prayer
Recognition — looking back and seeing the love that was always present, just unnamed.
Lyrics· 284 words
[Verse 1] Hands on my ribs I feel the shake Tongue in my mouth Too heavy to break
Eyes on the floor Heart in the pit I came here cracked I came here fit
I cannot name it So I move I cannot fix it So I prove
[Pre-Chorus] Step by step I let it pass Knee by knee I turn to ash
Breathe in panic Breathe out fire Closer, closer To the wire
[Chorus] Body becomes prayer Body becomes prayer When words fall out I move it there
Body becomes prayer Body becomes prayer I shake the grief I shake the air
(Body becomes prayer) (Body becomes prayer)
[Verse 2] Grief like a stone In my throat Desire like a blade In my coat
Fear at my back Love at my chest I keep on dancing To outlast
Tremble and turn Bruise and glow What I cannot say My feet still know
[Pre-Chorus] Step by step I let it pass Knee by knee I turn to ash
Breathe in panic Breathe out fire Closer, closer To the wire
[Chorus] Body becomes prayer Body becomes prayer When words fall out I move it there
Body becomes prayer Body becomes prayer I shake the grief I shake the air
(Body becomes prayer) (Body becomes prayer)
[Bridge] If I go silent Let the bass speak If I go thin Let my knees keep
[breakdown] I was never empty I was holding on I was never broken I was moving on
[Final Chorus] Body becomes prayer Body becomes prayer When words fall out I move it there
Body becomes prayer Body becomes prayer I survive the night I stay right here
(Body becomes prayer) (Body becomes prayer)
Short Story
*When words fail, the body finds another language.*
The year Sofia turned fifteen, her father was in hospital for six weeks and she stopped being able to sit still. It happened gradually — first she couldn't sit through dinner, then through homework, then through the particular silence of a house where one person was missing and nobody said his name too often in case saying it made the absence worse. She started walking. Long circuits of the neighbourhood at eleven at night, twelve, one in the morning, her headphones on and the music turned up to a volume that replaced thought with something else, something physical, a pressure behind the eyes that was almost a relief.
Her mother asked her to be home by ten. She was not home by ten. They argued about this in the careful way they argued about everything that year, circling the real subject the way you circle a fire — close enough to feel the heat, not close enough to get burned. The real subject was that they were both afraid and neither of them had anywhere to put it.
The music she walked to was not the music she had grown up with. It was hard and repetitive and built like a machine that refused to stop — four beats, four beats, four beats, relentless, without apology. Her friend Carla said it sounded like a headache. Sofia had tried to explain that it sounded like the opposite of a headache. It sounded like something that didn't need explaining. It sounded like her body saying: keep moving, keep moving, keep moving, which was a prayer, even if it didn't look like one.
Her father came home in November. He came home changed, thinner, with a seriousness around his eyes that hadn't been there before, but he came home. The first night, Sofia sat at the dinner table without her headphones for the first time in weeks and she noticed that the silence was different — it had her father in it now, breathing, reaching for bread, making the small sounds of someone present. She did not cry. She ate. Later she walked for one more hour, alone in the dark, the music loud and merciless and grateful.
She told no one that this was how she had survived it. She wasn't sure she had the language for it yet. She only knew that there are things the body understands before the mind catches up, and that movement is a form of faith even when you don't know what you're faithful to, and that some people pray with their feet.
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*You don't need words for what the body already knows how to do.*
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