How Much Weight Does Survival Add

Lyrics

Found this in the Star Mountains.
Papua New Guinea.
Among the leeches and the mist.
A piece of a Tokyo hospital.
Three in the morning, smelling of ethanol and plastic.

A patient ID wristband.
Faded thermal print.
The name is just "Steve."
Skinny Steve, they called you at the stable.
Showa General, Room 402.
Admitted August 14th, 2017.
The barcode is rubbed almost clean.
This little strap of vinyl, meant to be cut off with scissors.
Thrown in the biohazard bin.
But you kept it.
You folded it small.

How much weight does survival add?
This little piece of plastic, what does it weigh in the hand?
Less than a gram.
But what about the life attached?
The one you didn't lose in Room 402.
How heavy is the second chance?

You carried it from the ward,
past the dohyo where giants clash.
You, the ghost in the heya, sleeping on the cold floor.
You carried it across the sea.
Hiked it up to two thousand meters.
Left it under a fern where the birds-of-paradise cry at dawn.
Did you think the mountain could hold it for you?
Did you think the humidity would dissolve the memory?
Or were you just setting it down?

How much weight does survival add?
This little piece of plastic, what does it weigh in the soul?
Less than nothing.
But what about the life attached?
The one you have to live now, after Room 402.
How heavy is the second chance?

I can almost feel it.
The lightness of giving up. The beeping machines fading out.
And then the drag back in.
The sudden anchor of a pulse.
The weight of your own breath in your lungs again.
The weight of the wrestlers you tend.
The weight of a name that doesn't fit.
The weight of a body that refused to die.

I'm holding your proof.
Your discharge papers, folded to the size of a prayer.
Your cheap plastic basin, full of rain.
And this band.
This circle of a moment.
How much weight does it add?