Le Premier Goût

Lyrics

[Intro]
There it is.
A single red question on a white porcelain plate.
It isn't food, not yet.
It's a stranger in our house.

[Verse 1]
Your two-and-a-half-million-year-old mouth is a perfect, stubborn line.
Your eyes, wide with a wisdom you don't know you have.
You see the strange hairs on its skin, the cluster of tiny globes.
You smell an earth you have never walked on.
This is not the apple, not the bread.
This is the other.
The unknown.

[Chorus]
And this is the first taste, the premier goût.
This is the body's oldest argument.
The tongue's evolutionary caution.
It's the echo of a forager, hand hovering over a berry in a silent forest.
It's the million-year-old no.

[Verse 2]
I could tell you that it's safe.
That my love is a guarantee.
But you have twenty-five sentinels on your tongue, built to taste the bitter truth of poison.
You are listening to the ghosts of all the children who were wrong.
Who tasted the beautiful, deadly leaf.
This isn't a tantrum, little one.
It is a testament.

[Chorus]
And this is the first taste, the premier goût.
This is the body's oldest argument.
The tongue's evolutionary caution.
It's the echo of a forager, hand hovering over a berry in a silent forest.
It's the million-year-old no.

[Bridge]
It takes ten introductions for a stranger to become a friend.
Ten times on the plate.
Ten times pushed to the side.
Ten quiet offerings before the guards at the gate will even look away.
Safety is not a word.
Safety is a ritual.
Slow and patient and repeated.

[Outro]
The raspberry waits.
We wait.
There is no hurry.
The story has waited this long.
The first taste can wait for the morning.