?Interrobang! · Track 5 · middle
Dog Person, Cat's Collar
OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): a dead pet's collar, tags, and favorite toy. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): Dog Person Dana — feral-cat trapper from American cities; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: a deep, remote cave in the Ozarks. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: Dana, called Dog Person, traps cats she's not allowed to love; she carried a dead pet's collar into the dark. Can you love what you're only assigned to manage?
Lyrics
[Intro]Deep in the Ozarks. Tumbling Creek air.Fifty-five degrees, always.Wet limestone on the tongue.And here... something left behind.[Verse 1]A small leather collar, frayed at the buckle.The bell is silent now, packed with clay.A little brass tag. I rub it clean.One word. A name I won't say.Beside it, a catnip mouse, chewed soft, eyeless.This was a private grief, Dana.This was the one you let in.[Verse 2]They call you Dog Person Dana.Up at 3 AM. The Havahart traps click shut.The smell of tuna on your latex gloves.You manage the colonies. Trap, neuter, return.A necessary distance. A job to be done.You can't name them. You can't keep them.You can't love them, not a single one.[Chorus]But this one, you loved.You carried this small ghost down into the dark.Past the blind cavefish, past the sleeping bats.To leave it where the sun never starts.Can you love what you're only assigned to manage?The heart has its own ledger.Its own feral colonies, its own quiet damages.[Bridge]Is this where you come to unmask?To let the professional calm crack and fall away?To finally hold the one you couldn't save,far from the ones you save every day?This cold, constant dark... a place to feel it.A grief too sharp for the world above.The cost of caring by the rules.The exhaustion of a managed love.[Outro]The collar is so light in my hand.The name on the tag faces down.Dog Person Dana, and the cat she brought here.Just a whisper in the ground.Can you love...