Proprioception

Lyrics

[Intro]
(piano — played as if the pianist has her eyes closed, trusting her hands to find the keys)
(strings enter like a body settling into a chair it knows by feel)

[Verse 1]
Close your eyes
Raise your left hand
You know where it is
Without looking

That knowing has no name
In the daily language
The way water has no taste
When it's the only thing
You've ever drunk

But take it away —
The knowing —
And the hand becomes
A rumour
Your body once believed
But can no longer verify

Tôi từng bị sốt cao — I had a fever once
And for three hours
My hands belonged to the furniture
I could see them
On the bedsheet
But the bedsheet
Was another country
And my hands
Had not applied for visas

[Chorus]
(building — strings, piano, the waltz grounding itself)
Proprioception, proprioception
The body's conversation with itself
Proprioception, proprioception
The glass finds the hand
That finds the shelf
That finds the floor
That finds the foot
That didn't ask directions
Because the asking
And the knowing
Were the same muscle
And the muscle
Has been speaking
Since before the mouth
Learned how

[Verse 2]
(just voice and plucked strings, intimate)
Tôi nhớ lần đầu tiên đi giày cao gót
I remember the first time in heels
And the floor became a thesis
I hadn't read
And the thesis said:
You have always known the ground
But the ground has been promoted
To a different altitude
And the altitude has opinions
About your ankles

A dancer knows this sense
Better than the doctors
She closes her eyes
And her body draws a map
Of the room
From the inside
Using nothing but the weight
Of her own attention
On her own bones
And the bones answer
The way petrified cedar answers rain —
Slowly
And from a very old place

[Chorus]
Proprioception, proprioception
The body's conversation with itself
Proprioception, proprioception
The glass finds the hand
That finds the shelf

[Bridge]
(everything drops — voice alone, eyes closed)
Bà ngoại tôi — my grandmother
Could walk her kitchen blindfolded
Not because she'd memorised it
But because her kitchen
Had moved inside her body
The counter lived in her hip
The stove lived in her right turn
The drawer with the bánh mì knife
Lived in the exact distance
Between her elbow
And the feeling
Of being home

And when she moved to the city
And the kitchen changed
Her body mourned the old one
For a year
Reaching for counters
That had emigrated
Opening drawers
In the wrong country
Her proprioception
Homesick
For a room
That still lived
In her bones
Long after the bones
Had left the room

[Outro]
(piano returns — the eyes-closed playing, trusting, finding the keys)
Proprioception
(softly, the village accent present)
Tôi biết tôi ở đâu — I know where I am
Not because I look
Because the body
Keeps its own address book
And the address book
Is older than the addresses
(strings settle — the body arriving in itself)