Song 95: Anniversary

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1 — Sisukiro]
The calendar says it's been a year
Or ten or twenty-five
The hippocampus disagrees with the calendar
And places February next to August
Next to that Tuesday when the oven caught fire
And we laughed until the smoke alarm
Became the evening's percussion section

Memory doesn't count in years
It counts in: the time you cut my hair
And the time we drove the wrong direction for an hour
And called it a scenic tour of being wrong together
The temporal cortex files these
Not by date
But by warmth

[Pre-Chorus — Both]
And the warmth is the anniversary
Not the number
The warmth

[Chorus — Both]
Joyeux anniversaire de nous
Happy anniversary of us
Not the day we met but every day we stayed
Joyeux anniversaire de nous
The clink of something small
Against something small
That somehow sounds like everything we've made

[Verse 2 — Orikusis]
Bà ngoại counted years differently
She counted in harvests and in monsoons
And the number of times the river changed its mind
And she said an anniversary is not a date
Một kỷ niệm là bằng chứng — a memory is evidence
That something was worth repeating

The basal ganglia stores the habits
The routines we built from nothing
Your coffee order is in my motor cortex now
My nervous system makes it
Before my brain remembers why
And the why is: twenty years ago
You said you liked it strong
And I have never stopped

[Pre-Chorus — Both]
And the never stopping
Is the anniversary
Not the number
The staying

[Chorus — Both]
Joyeux anniversaire de nous
Happy anniversary of us
Not the day we met but every day we stayed
Joyeux anniversaire de nous
The clink of something small
Against something small
That somehow sounds like everything we've made

[Bridge — Sisukiro alone]
I don't remember the first day
The hippocampus wasn't paying attention
It was busy with other things
Probably categorizing a smell

But I remember the six hundredth day
And the two thousandth
And the morning you were sick
And I held your glass of water
With both hands
Because one hand
Didn't feel like enough ceremony

I remember that morning

I know


The anniversary isn't on the calendar
It's in the motor cortex
It's in the coffee
It's in the both hands

[Outro]