?Interrobang! · Track 81 · middle
Steadying Someone Across the Ice You Fear
OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): letters from an estranged parent, revealing secrets. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): Land Lover Larry — ice-rink hand-holder from a winter rink; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: a nameless island in the high Canadian Arctic. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: Larry holds nervous skaters' hands on the ice though he's a Land Lover; left his estranged parent's letters on a far Arctic island. Can you steady someone across the ice you fear yourself?
Lyrics
A nameless island in the high Canadian Arctic. The air has a dry, metallic taste. Forty below. And under a stone, a bundle of letters, tied with twine. They call him Land Lover Larry. A joke at the winter rink. He wears the company parka, smiles his practiced smile. His job is to hold the hands of the unsteady ones. The children on their first skates, the lovers laughing and wobbling. He is their anchor on the slick, frozen water. His gloved hand is a promise: you will not fall. He glides backwards, facing them, a human guardrail. They never see the tightness in his jaw. The way his own feet feel like they're breaking through. Can you steady someone else across the ice you fear? Can you guide them over the deep, cold truth of it? While the weight in your own pocket threatens to pull you under? These letters. Your parent's handwriting on the envelopes. No return address. Just secrets, sealed and delivered. You carried them all the way here, past the last tree line. Heard the sea ice creak and snap under your boots. A sound like a confession. You left them on an island no map has named. A place as silent and estranged as the words inside. A small plastic truck, half-buried in the gravel nearby. Another story with no ending. Can you steady someone else across the ice you fear? Can you guide them over the deep, cold truth of it? While the weight in your own pocket threatens to pull you under? Each letter, a thin sheet of ice. A voice you tried to forget, frozen mid-sentence. Maybe leaving them here was an act of kindness. Or maybe it was the same as holding a stranger's hand at the rink. A way to get through the moment. A way to pretend the surface is solid. To pretend you are not terrified of what lies beneath. I found them, Larry. The words are still cold to the touch. And the question... ...it just hangs here, in the air.