?Interrobang! · Track 21 · middle
What Survives the Wait
OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): a time capsule holding all her life's stages at once. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): Plastic Pete — cork harvester from the Alentejo; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: the far interior of Spitsbergen. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: Pete strips cork bark every nine years, measuring life in slow harvests though they call him Plastic; his time capsule ended in the Svalbard ice. What survives the waiting?
Lyrics
I found you in the far interior. Spitsbergen. A metal box sweating frost. Not plastic at all. Your owner... they called him Plastic Pete. Down in the Alentejo groves, where the sun is patient. He worked in nine-year harvests. The first cut only after the oak turned twenty-five. He knew how to wait. The warm, sweet resin smell of the bark coming free. The careful swing of the podao. A life measured by the slow breath of a tree. And he left you here, under the permanent cold. Every nine years, a new layer of skin from the oak. Every year, a new layer of ice over you. A lifetime sealed and sent to the silence. So what survives the waiting, Pete? What survives the wait? Inside, there's a child's tooth. A report card from 1978, the teacher's ink still blue. A faded Polaroid of a first love, squinting in the Portuguese sun. The key to a door that's long gone. Every stage, all at once. A whole life pressed together. Not breathing, not growing. Just... held. Frozen. And he left you here, under the permanent cold. Every nine years, a new layer of skin from the oak. Every year, a new layer of ice over you. A lifetime sealed and sent to the silence. So what survives the waiting, Pete? What survives the wait? The oaks in Alentejo, they keep their scars. They heal over, thicken, offer themselves again. Did you think this ice would be kinder? A preservation? A burial? Did you want someone to find this version of you? The one that stopped? The one that didn't have to face the next nine-year mark? The tree gives its life away in pieces, and lives. You hold it all inside, and wait. What survives? What survives?