?Interrobang! · Track 48 · middle
How Long Do You Wait for a Verdict
OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): the divorce papers from a separation that broke her. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): Patient Penny — government line-stander from a city of queues; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: the subarctic interior of the Yukon. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: Penny waits patiently in embassy lines though her own case tore her apart; left her divorce papers in the subarctic wild. How long do you wait on a verdict about a life?
Lyrics
[Intro] I found them near Whitehorse. A manila folder, the tab sticking out of the permafrost. Frozen solid. [Verse 1] In my journal, I call her Patient Penny. Her job was waiting. She stood in embassy lines in Tokyo, government queues. Holding a place for someone else's future. Nine hours for a stranger's visa stamp. Twenty hours for a permit. She was patient for everyone. Everyone but herself. [Chorus] How long do you wait for a verdict on a life? How long do you stand in that line? For the one piece of paper That ends everything you were And starts... whatever comes next. How long do you wait? [Verse 2] These pages are heavy. 20 pound bond paper. The kind they use in the Yukon so the forms don't crack at forty below. A blue stamp from a courthouse. A date from 2017. Two signatures, side-by-side. A final, frozen agreement. Left here to outlast the memory of any warmth. [Chorus] How long do you wait for a verdict on a life? How long do you stand in that line? For the one piece of paper That ends everything you were And starts... whatever comes next. How long do you wait? [Bridge] Maybe she left it here because the wind already sounds like tearing. A place where the sound of the end is just the weather. She finally walked away from the line. Dropped the file in the snow. And just kept walking. Into the quiet. Into the blue-white of a Yukon February. [Outro] The paper won't crack in the cold. It will just wait. Under the ice. A final word, unread. How long?