37..Story: What the Body Did Not Call a Lie
Verse 1
She said, “I know things happen by themselves,
but still there’s someone I can feel.”
Not in words, not in a clear hard place,
more like a hand beneath the wheel.
A hush of tension in the background,
a little leaning toward command,
as if the room was full of weather
and someone somewhere held the fan.
Pre-Chorus
But the hand turned over,
and the hand turned back.
No one stepped forward
to claim the act.
Chorus
And the body answered first —
a tightening in the deep,
heat behind the tear ducts,
warmth where the old grief sleeps.
Not a lie, not a failure,
not a wrong turn in the dark —
just the nervous system trembling
as the light reached further in the heart.
Verse 2
All those years of “I am choosing,”
“I should know,” “I must become,”
all those little unseen altars
where the self kept kneeling to control.
Then suddenly the floor gave way
beneath the old familiar room,
and sorrow rose like evening weather
through the ribs and through the bloom.
Pre-Chorus
What if the shaking
meant she had seen?
What if the breaking
was honest and clean?
Chorus
And the body answered first —
a tightening in the deep,
heat behind the tear ducts,
warmth where the old grief sleeps.
Not a lie, not a failure,
not a wrong turn in the dark —
just the nervous system grieving
for a ghost it carried in the heart.
Bridge
Every few months something falls away,
not with thunder, not with flame,
just one less knot around the breathing,
one less ache that knows its name.
Still impatience comes to whisper,
“Make it faster, get there soon.”
But who is hurrying the morning?
Who is pulling at the moon?
Verse 3
There was a retreat in winter silence,
ten days washed clean by bells and rice,
bliss for a moment like clear water,
then ordinary life.
No need to build a house there.
No need to wear that sky as skin.
A door can open and still close softly.
The opening is what entered in.
Final Chorus
And the hand turns over still —
in the kitchen, in the dusk,
and sometimes there is only movement,
and a tenderness like trust.
No one standing at the centre,
no commander in the seam,
just this strange and gentle grieving
as the old control thins into dream.
Outro
So let the body answer.
Let the small shifts go unpraised.
Let the leaves fall in their own time.
Let the nervous system change.
The hand turns over.
The night comes on.
And what was never steering
is still deeply mourned.
If you want, I can turn this into a more intimate Naomi-and-Daniel dialogue, or make the song more lyrical and less literal still.
