?Interrobang! · Track 7 · middle

Not My Animal, Not My Desert

OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): a musical instrument engraved with memory. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): Horse Whisperer Hank — camel-jockey trainer from the UAE; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: the deep interior of the Gobi. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: Hank trains camels though horses are his soul; abandoned an engraved instrument in the Gobi that isn't his desert. Can you give your life to a love that isn't yours?

Lyrics

[Intro]
Found you under a sun that bleaches bone.
Forty-two degrees.
Gobi.
Just you and the wind.

[Verse 1]
The wood is dark, worn smooth against a palm.
Not the wood of this place.
The grain remembers a different rain, a different tree.
And this string… it’s tuned for a song that doesn’t fit the silence here.
I smell the camel on the wind, but your scent is horsehair and sweat and hay.

[Chorus]
Horse Whisperer Hank, they called you.
And you trained the lurching ships of the sand sea.
Not your animal.
You left this music in a place that wasn't your desert.
Can you give your life, all your good years, to a love that isn't yours?

[Verse 2]
I picture you at the Al Marmoom track.
The shouting, the money, the long, awkward stride of the beast you perfected.
Did you close your eyes and hear hoofbeats?
A different thunder?
Did you feel a phantom rein in your hand, for a creature with a wilder heart?
A creature you understood without a word.

[Chorus]
Horse Whisperer Hank, they called you.
And you trained the lurching ships of the sand sea.
Not your animal.
You left this music in a place that wasn't your desert.
Can you give your life, all your good years, to a love that isn't yours?

[Bridge]
I trace the letters carved below the bridge.
A knife-point prayer.
"For the thunder you don't ride."
This was your secret church. Your testament.
The one true thing you owned.
And you walked out here, into the great empty, and put it down.
A sacrifice? A surrender?
Did you just get tired of holding it?

[Outro]
The wind moves across the sound hole.
It makes a low note that just… stops.
Doesn't end, just stops.
Not your animal.
Not your desert.
Not your song.