?Interrobang! · Track 14 · middle
Every Scar's Name
OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): a 'body story' journal — every scar's memory. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): Lactose Intolerant Larry — cheese affineur from the cellars of France; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: Lamprechtsofen, deep in the Austrian Alps. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: Larry ages cheese in caves though dairy wrecks him; left his body-story journal — each scar's tale — in a real cave. Do our bodies forgive what we keep feeding them?
Lyrics
[Intro] Lamprechtsofen. Four degrees Celsius. Your book is cold in my hands. It smells of damp limestone… and faintly, of milk. [Verse 1] Leather cover, swollen with moisture. The ink has feathered but the hand is clear. This is your body story, Larry. A map of every border breach. Page one: a pale crescent on the left knee. Age seven, a gravel road outside Lyon, 1982. The simple pain, the clean healing. Before the craft that chose you. [Verse 2] In other caves, the ones for work, you were the master. The affineur. Turning curd to gold, breathing the damp air thick with Penicillium roqueforti. You’d tap the wheels of cheese, listen for their heart. But your own body was a foreign country. Every taste, a quiet war. A knot in the gut, a slow burn. A love that cost you. [Chorus] Every scar has a name. Every mark, a day and a reason. This one from the fall, this one from the flame. But the hurt you choose, season after season… Does the body forgive what you keep feeding it? Does the flesh forget the beautiful poison? [Verse 3] A white line on your forearm, a burn from a whey kettle. The nick on your thumb from a cutting wire, 1993. You wrote them all down. Each entry shorter, tighter. The cramps that folded you in the dark. The price of perfection. The slow, souring conversation between your calling and your cells. [Bridge] You carried this atlas of your skin to the deepest part of another body, the earth's. Down here, a river sings a low complaint, a steady hum. The same note your nerves must have hummed for thirty years. You left your map inside a larger map. A body inside a body. [Chorus] Every scar has a name. Every mark, a day and a reason. This one from the fall, this one from the flame. But the hurt you choose, season after season… Does the body forgive what you keep feeding it? Does the flesh forget the beautiful poison? [Outro] I close the cover. Your name isn't in here. Just the stories the skin keeps. And the question.