?Interrobang! · Track 97 · middle

Closeness Past the Thing That Makes You Flinch

OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): old pen-pal letters from a long-distance friendship. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): Dog Allergy Dan — professional pet-cuddler from a pet hotel; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: Gouffre Jean-Bernard, deep in the French karst. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: How did Dog Allergy Dan's old pen-pal letters from a long-distance friendship come to rest in Gouffre Jean-Bernard, deep in the French karst? Some year Sisukiro will never name. The irony of Dog Allergy Dan the professional pet-cuddler is the whole question — and there is no easy answer.

Lyrics

Gouffre Jean-Bernard.
The air tastes of limestone and time.
Cold enough to see your breath.
And here, wedged in a fissure, wrapped in oilcloth... paper.

Your name was Dan.
Dog Allergy Dan.
That's what they called you at the pet hotel.
You cuddled the goldens, the schnauzers, the sad-eyed beagles for sixty dollars an hour.
Your eyes watering, a wheeze in your chest.
A professional closeness.
A paid affection that cost you a layer of skin.
You held them, and you flinched.

How do you get close... past the thing that makes you flinch?
Past the body's loud alarm?
Is it the letter, or the leash?
The ink, or the warm, breathing thing that makes you sick?
Which one is real?

These letters are from her.
I'll call her Eliza.
Ten years of correspondence, France to Oregon.
She writes about the rain in 1993.
You write about a dream of flying.
No allergies through the mail.
Just the clean, safe paper.
A love that never made you sneeze.
A friend you could hold in your hands without washing them after.

How do you get close... past the thing that makes you flinch?
Past the body's loud alarm?
Is it the letter, or the leash?
The ink, or the warm, breathing thing that makes you sick?
Which one did you trust?

So why bring her here?
To the deepest part of the karst.
Did you carry her words down past the siphons, through the tight squeezes in the dark?
Were you burying the only love that didn't hurt?
Or protecting it?
In a place as quiet and sealed as the envelope it came in.
A place that doesn't breathe.

I'm holding a page from 1997.
The ink has feathered.
You are both gone now.
And all that's left is the choice you made.
To hold the thing that broke you out in hives...
and hide the thing that didn't.
Why?