The Line at the Prison Gate

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Your eye held the fracture—
the moment grief splits into grammar,
each word a scar that learns to sing.
You stood in the queue outside the prison,
numbering your vigil in the cold,
and your mirror neurons fired in concert
with ten thousand faces pressing close,
teaching your cortex what suffering looks like
when it wears a human shape.

[Chorus]
You made the unbearable *testify*—
turned the axe-fall into a hymn,
the waiting into witness,
the wrung-out heart into a voice
that doesn't break, it *brightens*.

[Verse 2]
The hippocampus doesn't forget a thing:
not the lover's hand, not the son's arrest,
not the woman next to you whispering a name
as if saying it aloud might save him.
Your synaptic pathways carved deeper grooves
with each new devastation,
long-term potentiation of sorrow—
but look: you transmuted it,
made it *luminous*,
wrote it into the future's hands.

[Chorus]
You made the unbearable *testify*—
turned the axe-fall into a hymn,
the waiting into witness,
the wrung-out heart into a voice
that doesn't break, it *brightens*.

[Bridge]
Your interoception mapped the pulse of your nation,
your proprioception knew exactly where the knife would land—
and still you stood.
Still you spoke.
The glial cells supporting every syllable
were soaked in other people's tears,
and you *kept writing*.

[Chorus]
You made the unbearable *testify*—
turned the axe-fall into a hymn,
the waiting into witness,
the wrung-out heart into a voice
that doesn't break, it *brightens*.

[Outro]
The queue has dissolved into history,
but your words still stand in the cold,
still number the grief,
still teach the living how to survive
by bearing witness, line by line.