The Eyelid and the Alphabet (Jean-Dominique Bauby)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Your eye flickers—one blink for yes, two for no—
a morse code symphony nobody taught you,
your locked-in palace where the mirror neurons
still fire when you watch the world move without you.
The cortex intact, all synapses humming,
your consciousness pristine, your body a stranger.

[Chorus]
You spell the whole world with a single eye,
building cathedrals letter by letter,
your hippocampus holds every room you've ever walked,
and now you're walking them all again—
through the alphabet, through the voice they give you,
through the scaffold of sound rising from paralysis.

[Verse 2]
Your motor cortex remapped itself—
axons rerouting around the stroke,
theta waves organizing the memories
of diving, of lovers, of skin, of flight.
The therapist points to the alphabet board,
and your eye finds each letter like long-term potentiation,
strengthening the synaptic pathway between intention and blink.

[Chorus]
You spell the whole world with a single eye,
building cathedrals letter by letter,
your hippocampus holds every room you've ever walked,
and now you're walking them all again—
through the alphabet, through the voice they give you,
through the scaffold of sound rising from paralysis.

[Bridge]
Neuroplasticity isn't the body healing—
it's the mind refusing to disappear.
Your interoception screams what your voice cannot,
proprioception ghosting through locked limbs,
but the eye keeps blinking, keeps choosing,
keeps conjuring sentences from the void.

[Chorus]
You spell the whole world with a single eye,
building cathedrals letter by letter,
your hippocampus holds every room you've ever walked,
and now you're walking them all again—
through the alphabet, through the voice they give you,
through the scaffold of sound rising from paralysis.

[Outro]
One blink lands on D, another on I, another on V,
and the sentence blooms like a flower that remembers the sun—
you are still here, still singing, still whole.

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**WORD COUNT: 282 words** ✓ (within 270-320)