What I Was Afraid Of · Track 47 · middle
Honjo Masamune
Honjo Masamune — Legendary Japanese katana by Masamune. Register: ancient. This song is sung BY this weapon, in first person, about the one thing IT was afraid of. Find the fear that is true of this specific object, not a generic one.
No audio yet — generation pending.
Lyrics
For three hundred years I was the spine of the state. Wrapped in pale silk, steadying the weight. If you angle me just right, you can read the frozen sky— the martensite crystals, the nie in the steel. I only took the breath that the heavens allowed. I was quiet in the wood. I was dangerously proud. But what does a god do in a cardboard box? When the lock clicks shut and the ticking clock is the only pulse in a stranger’s hall? I am afraid of the dust. I am afraid of the wall. To survive the fire, to survive the reign, and become a heavy secret with a missing name. December 1945. The Mejiro station floor. They laid me on a table by a swinging wooden door. A foreigner took my hilt, and the body schema broke— a hand gripping an object, not a word in the stroke. The perfect geometry of my curve didn't translate. I was just a piece of metal with a severed fate. But what does a god do in a cardboard box? When the lock clicks shut and the ticking clock is the only pulse in a stranger’s hall? I am afraid of the dust. I am afraid of the wall. To survive the fire, to survive the reign, and become a heavy secret with a missing name. I was folded by a master, earth and iron made pure. I was meant to be a warning, I was built to endure. But I am wrapped in an oily cloth, beneath a woolen coat, with a century of silence rising in my throat. No hands to map my shape. No light to catch the edge. Just the quiet. Waiting in the dark. Waiting for someone to know exactly what I