The Spoon and the Impossibility

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Your hands went into chlorinated water—
simple as that—and mothers stopped dying.
The ward fell silent first, then the numbers,
then the faces stopped turning away.
You stood at the basin, watching
synaptic plasticity reshape itself
in your own cortical map: this gesture,
this small burning across your palms,
rewired everything downstream.

[Chorus]
Your hands remember what the world forgot—
that touching death and then touching life
is a choice, is a practice, is the whole song.
The mirror neurons of every hand
that followed yours learned it through your body first.
You didn't preach salvation.
You washed.

[Verse 2]
Long-term potentiation in the obstetric ward:
each scrub strengthened the synapse between
observation and action, between what you saw
and what you *had* to do.
The myelination of habit—new sheaths
wrapping around the neural pathways
that made hand-washing automatic, necessary,
non-negotiable as breath.
Your fingers became the evidence.
Your fingernails the first truth.

[Chorus]
Your hands remember what the world forgot—
that touching death and then touching life
is a choice, is a practice, is the whole song.
The mirror neurons of every hand
that followed yours learned it through your body first.
You didn't preach salvation.
You washed.

[Bridge]
You stood in the washroom alone,
theta waves firing between knowing and acting,
your own interoception screaming:
*this is the answer, this tiny burning*.
The glial cells in your prefrontal cortex
holding steady while the world called you mad—
holding so steady your hands
became the prophecy your voice couldn't speak.

[Chorus]
Your hands remember what the world forgot—
that touching death and then touching life
is a choice, is a practice, is the whole song.
The mirror neurons of every hand
that followed yours learned it through your body first.
You didn't preach salvation.
You washed.

[Outro]
Even now, your palms are not clean—
they're stained with the chlorine of certainty,
and that stain is the only inheritance
that matters: hands touching hands,
washing their way into tomorrow.