The Knuckles She Pressed to the Ground (Dian Fossey)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
You arrived in the Virungas with bad knees
and no Swahili and a fear of heights
which is an unusual résumé
for someone planning to live on a volcano
The gorillas looked at you the way a family
looks at a stranger who sat down at their table
and hasn't apologized —
you solved this by not apologizing
You ate what they ate, sat where they sat
made yourself a very large, very still plant
and waited until they forgot
you were not one of them

[Verse 2]
Digit was the first to touch you —
a young silverback with a scar across his nose
who reached out one afternoon
and pressed your hand flat against his chest
the way you would show a child
where their own name lives
You described his fingers as gentle
which is a word that weighs differently
when the hand attached to it
could fold a car door in half

[Chorus]
You named them — Digit, Uncle Bert, Macho, Puck —
because a thing with a name
is harder to sell as an ashtray
harder to mount on a wall
harder to explain to a customs officer
You understood the economics of vanishing:
the poachers took hands for souvenirs
heads for trophies
and you fought them with a fury
that made the mountain itself seem moderate

[Verse 3]
Eighteen years on the volcano
your cabin filling with field notes
and the particular loneliness
of someone who speaks a language
no one else considers a language
You communicated in chest-rumbles
and slow approach and averted gaze
and the precise angle at which a lowered head
means I am not a threat
You became so fluent in gorilla
that human conversation
started to feel like the foreign one

[Bridge]
They found Digit with his hands cut off
and you buried what was left of him
behind the cabin
and something in you shifted
from researcher to fortification —
the data stopped mattering
the way a fuse stops mattering
after the building is on fire
You burned poachers' camps
You wore masks to terrify their children
The scientific community called it unhinged
but you were not doing science anymore
You were doing the only other thing

[Outro]
They killed you in your cabin on the mountain
with a machete — your own, from the wall —
and the case was never solved
in the way that cases are never solved
when everyone knows the answer
but the answer has money behind it
The gorillas are still there
because of what you became when Digit died
The drawer where they keep your name
is built into the side of the volcano
and the mountain does not open it for anyone
who hasn't sat still long enough