?Interrobang! · Track 2 · middle
The Cure and the Bite
OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): prescription bottles and records of a private diagnosis. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): Bunny Hopkins — snake milker from the venom farms; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: Kunyang Chhish West, an unclimbed Karakoram wall. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: Bunny milks the venom that becomes the antidote; her own diagnosis-records she carried toward an unclimbed wall and left. Is the thing that poisons you the same thing that saves you?
Lyrics
[Intro]Kunyang Chhish West.Seven thousand meters up.A wall no one has climbed.And here, wedged in the ice...A little plastic bottle.Two of them.And a paper, folded eight times.Bunny Hopkins. Your name.[Verse 1]I see your hands. Steady.In the room kept at exactly 28 degrees.Because a two-degree drop makes them slow.The Gaboon viper, the cobra.You coax the head to the taut membrane.The bite.That drop of gold on a chilled steel tray.The sharp smell of ammonia and danger.A perfect, measured poison.Bill Haast did it three million times.You, every day. For the cure.[Chorus]But what about this?This diagnosis, your name typed at the top.The prescription you carried all this way.Bunny Hopkins, you milk the snake.Is the venom that saves you the same as the venom that breaks?Is the cure just the poison, in a different shape?The bite, and the thing that heals the bite?[Verse 2]The doctor’s signature is a blue scrawl I can’t read.The words are clear enough.A private weather system.A storm inside the blood.You left the lab, the 28 degrees of control.You came here, to the wind that cuts like needles.To the place no one has stood.Did you think the altitude would burn it out?Or that leaving it here would leave it behind?This little bottle, rattling.[Chorus]But what about this?This diagnosis, your name typed at the top.The prescription you carried all this way.Bunny Hopkins, you milk the snake.Is the venom that saves you the same as the venom that breaks?Is the cure just the poison, in a different shape?The bite, and the thing that heals the bite?[Bridge]One drop kills.One drop, refined, saves a life.You hold both in your hands every day.Did you look at this paper, this other poison,and wonder if you could milk it too?Wonder if the antidote was hidden inside the sentence?[Outro]Is the thing that poisons you...the only thing that saves you?Bunny?