?Interrobang! · Track 25 · middle

Everything She Couldn't Say

OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): a notebook of raw, unspeakable rage and venting. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): Chatty Cathy — living statue from the squares of Rome; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: an unnamed seamount in the far southern Pacific. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: Cathy holds perfectly still and silent for tips though she's a chatterbox; sank her notebook of unspeakable things onto a seamount no one's touched. Where does the unsaid go?

Lyrics

They called you Chatty Cathy.
And paid you for your silence.
Painted gold on the cobblestones of the Piazza Navona.

Don't move. Don't flinch. Don't breathe too loud.
Let the pigeon land on your shoulder.
Let the tourist with the sticky fingers poke your ribs to see if you're real.
Smile a painted, cracked smile.
Count the insults in your head.
A list for the man who blew smoke in your face.
A list for the child who kicked your pedestal.
Just another hour. Just another coin in the hat.

But every night, this little book.
This black-bound notebook, full of ink and teeth.
Everything you couldn't say.
Three thousand meters down on a mountain no one's named.
Is that deep enough?
Where does the unsaid go to scream?

I found it wedged in cold basalt.
The pages warped but the words were clear.
A litany of every tiny violence.
Every swallowed word, every held-in breath.
You wrote until your knuckles were white.
You wrote them down and then you let them go.
Gave them to the crushing, absolute dark.

Did you think the pressure down here would match the pressure in your chest?
Two degrees Celsius.
No one to poke you. No one to ask if you're real.
Just the slow creak of the vents.
A silence as perfect as the one they paid you for.

Chatty Cathy.
I'm holding your rage in my hands.
It's heavier than water.
Where does it go?
Where does it go?