L'Attachement

Lyrics

I am learning the shape of absence.
You are learning the physics of faith.
Before this, there was only the appearing.
My face, a sudden sun.
The red rattle, a noise from nowhere.
Gone was gone. Wiped from the slate.
Piaget's little blanket trick,
hiding the world under a patch of wool.
Out of sight was out of mind,
a clean and brutal kind of magic.
You lived in a flicker, a film with no cuts,
just one long, unbroken, present tense.
But then the door clicks shut.
A wall of white wood where my smile was.
And the question hangs in the quiet air of your room,
between the bars of your crib:
Does a mother exist when you cannot see her?
Is a love still real when it makes no sound?
This is the work. L'attachement.
Now, a furrow in your brow.
A memory holds on.
You look for the duck where it was yesterday,
under the towel, by the edge of the bath.
A ghost of a gesture.
Your small fist opens and closes on the empty air.
You are looking past the blanket now.
Your eyes search the space where I stood.
Not for the toy, but for the hand that held it.
The map begins to outlive the territory.
And the door clicks shut.
A wall of white wood where my arms were.
And the question echoes in the quiet air of your room,
a hum inside your bones:
Does a mother exist when you cannot see her?
Is a love still real when it makes no sound?
This is the work. L'attachement.
And one day, you don't cry.
You just listen.
You hear my footsteps fade down the hall.
You feel the scent of my skin still on your sheet.
And you know.
You know I am a continuous thing.
That the house contains me.
That my return is not a miracle, but a promise.
You have built me inside your head.
The first, most necessary ghost.
And on my side of the door,
I am holding my breath.
Listening for the silence.
The sound of you, believing in me.