La Vague

Lyrics

My heart, a hurried bird against its cage.
Yours, a slower, steadier drum.
You lay your hand on my chest, just there.
I feel the quiet question of your pulse against my own.
A conversation with no words.
And the wave begins.
La vague.
This slow pull into your orbit.
My rhythm gives way to yours.
It isn't a surrender.
It's an agreement made in the dark.
Christiaan Huygens, in his Paris chamber.
February, sixteen sixty-five.
He hung two clocks from a single wooden beam.
And watched them argue, then agree.
'They had agreed perfectly,' he wrote to his father.
Two pendulums, swinging in the same plane, keeping step without varying in the slightest.
And the wave begins.
La vague.
This slow pull into your orbit.
My rhythm gives way to yours.
It isn't a surrender.
It's an agreement made in the dark.
He thought it was the air at first.
Some imperceptible movement.
But it was the beam.
The solid thing between them.
The vibration traveling through the wood.
He called it 'sympathy.'
This is our wooden beam.
This quiet room.
This sympathy.
Your hand, a slow drum against my spine.
My heart answers.
And answers.
Yes.