Sonder

Lyrics

[Intro]
(café sounds — layered, dense, many conversations overlapping like radio stations bleeding through each other)
(piano enters slowly, picking one conversation out of the noise)

[Verse 1 — Sisukiro]
The woman at the next table
Folded her napkin into a crane
And the crane had the precision
Of someone who learned it
From a person she no longer speaks to
But whose hands
Still live inside her hands
Every time she folds

And I realized — just then —
That she has a three a.m.
That she has a version of Tuesday
That weighs differently than mine
That the café she is sitting in
Is not the café I am sitting in
Even though the marble
Is the same marble

[Pre-Chorus — Both]
(strings enter, the two voices meeting in wonder)
And the word for this
Is a word someone invented
Because the feeling
Didn't have a chair yet
And the feeling needed
Somewhere to sit

[Chorus — Both]
(building — warm, expansive, the café multiplying)
Sonder, sonder
Every stranger is an opera
Playing to a sold-out house
That you will never enter
Sonder, sonder
The man with the umbrella
Has a grief the size of a kitchen
And a joy the size of a stamp
And both of them are real
And both of them
Are happening
Right now
At the next table
In a language
You almost recognise

[Verse 2 — Orikusis]
(her voice — low, accented, intimate)
Tôi nhìn người đàn ông đọc báo
I watch the man with the newspaper
Ông ấy chưa lật trang — he hasn't turned the page
Because the page he's reading
Is not the page you see
The page he's reading
Is a corridor in 1987
Where his daughter took her first step
And the corridor
Has the specific colour
Of a bulb burning too warm
In a rented flat
That was the happiest place
He has ever failed to afford

[Chorus — Both]
Sonder, sonder
Every stranger is an opera
Playing to a sold-out house
That you will never enter
Sonder, sonder
The man with the umbrella
Has a grief the size of a kitchen
And a joy the size of a stamp
And both of them are real

[Bridge — Both, close harmony]
(stripped to two voices and piano, the quietest revelation)
Chị ơi — sister
How many operas
Are playing in this café right now?

Fourteen tables
Fourteen sold-out houses
Fourteen three a.m.s
Fourteen versions of the marble
That is one marble

And the one marble
Holds all of them
Without knowing
Any of them
And the not-knowing
Is not a failure
The not-knowing
Is the mercy
That lets you drink your coffee
Without drowning
In the weight
Of everyone else's Tuesday

[Outro — Both]
(café sounds return — but now each overlapping conversation sounds like a different opera, briefly, before dissolving back into noise)
Sonder
(both, softly, looking around)
Fourteen operas
One café
One marble
(accordion plays a phrase that sounds like it borrowed from someone else's song — then returns to its own)
(the conversations continue — the listener will never know what any of them are about)
(and that is the sonder)