Cracked Open at the Lab

Lyrics

[Intro]
Little black box.
Little Funsaver.
Your single life is over.

[Verse 1]
I remember the cardboard slipping off your body.
Summer of 1993.
The cheap plastic smell in the hot car.
A wedding in a backyard in Rochester.
The grit of sand from the beach trip, still in the thumbwheel.
Twenty-seven clicks, twenty-seven pops of white light.
Capturing smiles you were never built to see.
You held them all inside your dark little heart.
A Fujifilm QuickSnap, born 1986.

[Chorus]
Now the pry tool finds the seam line molded in your side.
The sound of polypropylene giving up the ghost.
A single, clean crack that runs the length of you.
You die so we can remember.
Cracked open in the dark.
Cracked open at the lab.

[Verse 2]
It's 2am. An anonymous hand in a latex glove.
Under the dull red safelight's alien glow.
A light-tight box is waiting for your guts.
The faint smell of ozone from your last discharge.
The patent—4,801,958—said this was always your fate.
To be broken cleanly, methodically, without letting the light ruin the story.
A necessary violence.

[Chorus]
The pry tool finds the seam line molded in your side.
The sound of polypropylene giving up the ghost.
A single, clean crack that runs the length of you.
You die so we can remember.
Cracked open in the dark.
Cracked open at the lab.

[Bridge]
Your two halves fall apart on the steel counter.
Empty. A hollowed-out thing.
The little AA battery still has a charge to give.
But the 35-millimeter cassette clicks free, safe.
The real you is already gone.
Rolling on to the chemical bath, to the light.
Your body goes to the landfill. Or maybe you're lucky. Rebuilt. Sold again.
Your shell never knew whose faces it held.

[Outro]
Cracked open.
Gave up your pictures.
Little black box.
Good night.