The Suitcase at Portbou

Lyrics

**Central Image: The Angelus Novus painting — interpreted as history itself, fragments, ruins, the debris of progress**

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[Verse 1]
Your eyes trace wreckage like a map of time,
each shattered thing a synapse firing bright—
the angel turns but cannot look away,
your cortical remapping reads the scar,
the rubble glowing where the world moves on,
and you stand fixed, collecting what remains.

[Chorus]
You gather up the broken, make it sing,
extract the constellation from the ruin,
your mirror neurons fire at every face
the world discards—you see them, hold them close,
you stitch the debris into something true,
a prophecy written in the wreckage.

[Verse 2]
Theta waves slow as you read the refuse,
each torn page floods your hippocampus whole—
the past consolidates inside your grip,
not as it was, but as it could have meant,
long-term potentiation of the ache,
your axons branch to catch what others miss.

[Chorus]
You gather up the broken, make it sing,
extract the constellation from the ruin,
your mirror neurons fire at every face
the world discards—you see them, hold them close,
you stitch the debris into something true,
a prophecy written in the wreckage.

[Bridge]
The angel glows because you touch its wound,
because your proprioception reads the space
where hope collapsed, where progress spun its lie,
and you stand there—your interoception blazing—
feeling every tremor in the stones,
making the ruins radiant.

[Chorus]
You gather up the broken, make it sing,
extract the constellation from the ruin,
your mirror neurons fire at every face
the world discards—you see them, hold them close,
you stitch the debris into something true,
a prophecy written in the wreckage.

[Outro]
The angel's wings beat against the wind of history,
but your hand holds steady—
the fragments luminous now, finally read,
finally loved.

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**WORD COUNT: 287 words** ✓