?Interrobang! · Track 99 · middle
Grieving the Lives That Almost Were
OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): a menstrual and fertility journal full of private notes. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): Cat Hater Clara — pet-funeral celebrant from a pet cemetery; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: Sima de la Cornisa, deep in Spain. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: How did Cat Hater Clara's a menstrual and fertility journal full of private notes come to rest in Sima de la Cornisa, deep in Spain? Some year Sisukiro will never name. The irony of Cat Hater Clara the pet-funeral celebrant is the whole question — and there is no easy answer.
Lyrics
[Intro] This one was cold to the touch. Damp, but not ruined. Found sixty meters down, on a limestone ledge. Sima de la Cornisa. Your little book of numbers, Clara. [Verse 1] A temperature for every dawn. A line drawn, a hope held. Basal body, charted. Little red dots marching across a grid. Page after page of waiting. Ovulation test strips, tucked between the leaves like pressed flowers. Negative. Negative. Faintly positive? Then the blood, and the temperature drop. And the next month's graph, waiting, clean and empty. [Chorus] They called you Cat Hater Clara. You wrote eulogies for golden retrievers. You stood in a black suit and spoke of loyalty for someone else's loss, for a fee. But who gives the service for a life that only might have been? Who holds the funeral for a ghost inside of you? [Verse 2] I picture you at a tiny gravesite. A hamster named Stuart. A parakeet named Chipper. You find the perfect words for their small, completed lives. You offer comfort, a steady hand on a stranger's shoulder. You fold the little velvet cloth over the box. Did you drive home and open this book? Did you mark another day in pencil, and say nothing? [Chorus] They called you Cat Hater Clara. You wrote eulogies for golden retrievers. You stood in a black suit and spoke of loyalty for someone else's loss, for a fee. But who gives the service for a life that only might have been? Who holds the funeral for a ghost inside of you? [Bridge] Did you bring it down here to bury it? This quiet grief that has no name, no stone. Down past the scent of bat ammonia and wet clay. Down where the dark doesn't care about your charts. A final resting place for all the little red dots. A grave for a possibility. [Outro] The last page is just a date. No temperature. No notes in the margin. Just the date, and then... empty grids. Empty pages, waiting in the Spanish dark.