Phosphenes

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a lamp switch, then room tone, then almost nothing)
Close them. That's all. Just close them.

[Verse 1]
It is never black in there. You always thought it would be black.
But there's a green that isn't green, and a drifting kind of grain,
and a slow rotating something in the corner of the dark
that moves when you don't chase it and dissolves the moment you do.
Nobody put it there. There's no light in the room.
That's your own eye, talking to itself, with nothing left to see.

[Chorus]
Phosphenes. That's the word. There is a word for it.
The dark is not empty, the dark has weather in it —
a lattice, then a spiral, then a checkerboard that breathes,
then a colour you could not name if somebody asked you to.
Phosphenes. Everyone has them. Every single night.
And nobody mentions it. Nobody ever mentions it.

[Verse 2]
Press gently on the lid and you can make them if you want,
a bloom of gold, a ring, a shudder like a struck bell —
but the ones that come unasked are the ones that mean you're going,
they arrive about a minute in, and they mean the door is open.
You can't hold one still. That's the whole nature of it.
Look directly at it, and it was never there.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
And this is the part I find genuinely beautiful:
the eye keeps making pictures when there's nothing left to make them from.
Not because it's broken. Because it cannot help it.
An organ built for light, running on in the dark,
inventing weather. Inventing a small grey sea.
That's not a malfunction. That's just what you are.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(room tone, settling)
It's already started.
You didn't notice it start.