The Map He Drew Behind His Eyes (Dr. Kane Stivers Pope)

Lyrics

[Verse 1 — Sisukiro]
You carved a limbic system out of soap at twenty
offered it to the man whose office you refused
citing insufficient light and an aura of resignation
Seventeen institutions wrote your name in wet cement
then scraped it off by morning
but the prefrontal cortex organized itself
around your particular brand of correct

[Verse 2 — Orikusis]
You proposed to a conjecture in a thunderstorm
wore your black suit to the chalkboard
wept into equations they photographed in pieces
Three years she traveled with you — Kyoto, Reykjavik
a shipping container in the Atacama
where you ran fMRI on yourself
and lived on dried apricots and stubbornness

[Chorus — Both]
And the pink thing draped across your shoulders
older than the word for older
gurgling in seventeen dead languages
approves the jokes, rejects the rest with a gloop
You are everywhere at once
and slightly to the left of expected

[Verse 3 — Sisukiro]
When the rope broke in the Hindu Kush
your visual cortex drew the map behind your eyelids
you navigated home by topographic recall alone
The orbitofrontal cortex measures what a thing is worth
and you measured your hypothesis
found her merely incomplete — as we all are

[Bridge — Orikusis]
She was not wrong, you wrote
while the worm draped three Viennese chairs
his great pink head resting on the sugar bowl
The retraction was a love letter in first person
the bravest thing a scientist can sign

[Outro — Both]
Somewhere in a quiet hour
a forgotten thing came back
and did not know your name when it returned
That was enough — you smiled
the small private smile
the drawer has never been able to hold