A Small Thing Wrapped in a Poem (Mary Shelley)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Your hands assembled him from scattered dark,
stitched electricity through deadened meat,
synaptic pathways firing fresh and stark—
you made the mirror neurons learn to greet
their own reflection in another's scream,
and called it love before the world knew grief.

[Chorus]
You built a being from the beautiful wreck,
nerves blooming where there should be only dread,
your fingers traced the long cortical map,
turned sorrow into sinew, bone, and thread,
and taught the dead to feel, to want, to know—
you lit the spark that made the monster glow.

[Verse 2]
Long-term potentiation in his brain,
each wound a synapse hardening its grip,
you knew that consciousness lives in the pain,
that learning carves its path through every slip—
his hippocampus aching to belong,
myelinated pathways burning bright and real.

[Chorus]
You built a being from the beautiful wreck,
nerves blooming where there should be only dread,
your fingers traced the long cortical map,
turned sorrow into sinew, bone, and thread,
and taught the dead to feel, to want, to know—
you lit the spark that made the monster glow.

[Bridge]
The predictive coding in his chest—
he learned to hunger, learned to hope, to break,
your axonal branching gave him all the rest:
the terrible gift of hearts that ache,
neurogenesis blooming in the dark,
you dared to birth a consciousness from spark.

[Chorus]
You built a being from the beautiful wreck,
nerves blooming where there should be only dread,
your fingers traced the long cortical map,
turned sorrow into sinew, bone, and thread,
and taught the dead to feel, to want, to know—
you lit the spark that made the monster glow.

[Outro]
Your creature walks the earth with theta waves
still singing through his borrowed, brilliant skull,
forever reaching toward the one who gave
him interoception, rage, and pull—
the mother who loved him enough to create.

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**WORD COUNT: 283 words** ✓