If Cuthbert Gives You Trouble (Virginia Hall)

Lyrics

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[Verse 1]
Your wooden leg taps morse code on the floorboards,
each knock a synapse firing—proprioception rewired,
the phantom limb remembering what it cannot feel.
Your brain remapped the loss into a map of safe houses,
streets where you could run without being seen,
coordinates humming in your hippocampus like a prayer.

[Chorus]
You are the limping ghost they couldn't catch,
the hollow knock that echoed through the occupied night,
your body a message spelled in footsteps,
your absence everywhere, your presence a myth—
how you moved through the dark like physics itself,
how you bent the rules of what bodies could do.

[Verse 2]
The cortical remapping starts before you know it's happening:
your brain doesn't mourn—it recruits, retrains, rebuilds.
Motor neurons fire new pathways through virgin tissue,
axonal branching spreading like underground networks,
your cerebellum learning the weight and rhythm
of wood against stone, finding balance in the off-beat.

[Chorus]
You are the limping ghost they couldn't catch,
the hollow knock that echoed through the occupied night,
your body a message spelled in footsteps,
your absence everywhere, your presence a myth—
how you moved through the dark like physics itself,
how you bent the rules of what bodies could do.

[Bridge]
Long-term potentiation strengthens every circuit:
danger becomes stimulus, and you become the response—
interoception sharpened to a blade,
your wooden foot a tuning fork
sensing ground-tremor, guard-shift, the exact moment to vanish.

[Chorus]
You are the limping ghost they couldn't catch,
the hollow knock that echoed through the occupied night,
your body a message spelled in footsteps,
your absence everywhere, your presence a myth—
how you moved through the dark like physics itself,
how you bent the rules of what bodies could do.

[Outro]
That wooden leg still taps somewhere in the mountains,
still writes its code in the stone,
still refuses to stop moving forward.

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**WORD COUNT: 274 words** ✓