L'Appel du Lointain

Lyrics

The qulliq sputters, a small sun in a room of hide and bone.
The stew is thick on the air, a promise of warmth.
And the feeling rises again from the belly.
Not a thought, not a word, but a current that pulls my legs.
Up from the furs, across the packed earth floor.
My thumb finds the familiar pane of ice, the cold that bites back.

There is a path worn in the floor for this.
There is a name for this pull of the far-away.
This need to look when looking is useless.
Iktsuarpok.
The body answers a call the ears can't hear.

The light outside is blue now, then the deep grey of a coming storm.
The wind has a different voice, it scrapes ice-dust against the wall like a claw.
I tell myself, this is the last time.
But the silence inside is too loud, it hums with your absence.
And my hand is already there, melting its small circle of hope onto the glass.
The landscape is a white page.
No ink, no shadow, no story but snow.

There is a path worn in the floor for this.
There is a name for this pull of the far-away.
This need to look when looking is useless.
Iktsuarpok.
The body answers a call the ears can't hear.

Is it for you I look? For the tiny black dot that will become your shape?
Or is it for the looking itself?
A ritual against the vastness, to keep the heart from freezing solid.
A prayer made of movement and friction.
To press my small warmth against the great cold.
To prove I am still here.
Waiting.
Believing in a speck on the horizon that has never been there.
Not yet.

My breath fogs the little window I made.
The world disappears again.
One more breath.
The lamp flickers.
And then... my body decides for me.
Maybe one more look.