Faim de Peau

Lyrics

My arms know the shape of the air.
They have mapped its emptiness.
Every small hair a lonely antenna...
broadcasting into silence.

They call it the poverty of isolation.
A deficit not of the wallet, but of the nerve ending.
My C-tactile afferents, that's their name...
a network tuned for a slow hand, a gentle stroke at three centimeters per second.
They wait.
They listen for the pressure that says *you are here*.
The signal that quiets the alarm.

It’s a hunger the tongue cannot taste.
Faim de peau.
An ache in the largest organ.
A longing for the chemical of calm, the quiet harbor of oxytocin.
My skin is starving.

In the fifties, Harry Harlow knew.
He built a mother of wire and milk,
and a mother of terry cloth and comfort.
And the small monkeys, they made their choice.
They ran to the wire for a desperate sip,
then spent all their hours clinging to the soft, useless warmth.
They knew, even then.
The body’s first priority is not food.
It is safety.

It’s a hunger the tongue cannot taste.
Faim de peau.
An ache in the largest organ.
A longing for the chemical of calm, the quiet harbor of oxytocin.
My skin is starving.
We are all clinging to the cloth.

I bought a blanket filled with glass beads.
A mechanical hug for the year 2024.
Ten kilograms of synthetic reassurance.
A ghost limb for a missing embrace.
It presses down, but it does not press back.
It is a wire mother, pretending to be cloth.

My arms know the shape of the air.
My skin remembers every touch it was never given.
Faim de peau.
Faim de peau.