Gigil II: La Morsure Tendre (The Tender Bite)

Lyrics

[Intro]
(celeste — sweet, music-box innocent)
(then pizzicato — sharp, a small bite in the melody)

[Verse 1]
The Filipinos have a word for this —
Gigil — the urge to squeeze
Something so loved
Your hands forget
They are not designed for destruction

But this isn't a kitten
This is a memory
Tôi nhớ bà ngoại — I remember my grandmother
Folding spring rolls at the counter
And the memory is so tender
I want to bite it
The way a child bites the thing
It cannot absorb through love alone
And the biting is the overflow valve
On an emotional system
That was built for survival
Not for this much sweetness

[Chorus]
(building — strings and celeste, sweet and sharp simultaneously)
La morsure tendre, la morsure tendre
Gigil for the things that are already gone
La morsure tendre, la morsure tendre
The amygdala clenching around a song
That the hippocampus keeps replaying
Until the replaying becomes a bruise
And the bruise is shaped like her hands
And I would not trade the bruise
For the absence of the bruise

[Verse 2]
(just voice and pizzicato, intimate, the teeth showing)
The dimorphous expression theory says
The brain produces opposite reactions
When the feeling is too large
For the container it was issued

Crying when happy
Laughing at funerals
And wanting to crush
The face of a memory
That has the audacity
To be this beautiful
And this unreachable
Simultaneously

Tôi muốn cắn vào ký ức đó
I want to bite that memory
The way you bite your lip
When someone says something
So true
It needs a wound
To enter through

[Chorus]
La morsure tendre, la morsure tendre
Gigil for the things that are already gone
La morsure tendre, la morsure tendre
The amygdala clenching around a song
That the hippocampus keeps replaying
Until the replaying becomes a bruise
And the bruise is shaped like her hands

[Bridge]
(everything drops — just voice, whispering)
Bà ơi — grandmother
The spring rolls were perfect
And I am trying to hold them
In a memory
That my teeth keep testing
For ripeness

And they are ripe
And they are always ripe
And the ripeness is killing me
Gently
The way only tenderness can kill

[Outro]
(celeste returns — the innocent melody, but now you hear the teeth in it)
La morsure tendre
(softly, smiling, aching)
The tender bite
Vết cắn dịu dàng
The bruise I chose
(pizzicato — one sharp pluck, then silence)