Everything the Shadow Can't
Nova Rai · Haresalam, 21 of 22
The story
There is always someone on the shore who watches and never swims. He sees the flesh and misses the prayer inside it. This song is sung to him. Giving is the one thing the shadow never learns, because it thinks the whole world has to burn before it can be warm. We're warm already. That's the difference.
Lyrics
Sit down, dark man, and watch me take
the thing you'd break if you could break.
I'm going to show you what you lack:
the art of giving yourself back.
He opens where you always close.
I'll take him places no one goes.
Not because it's dark down there.
Because we're brave enough to bare.
I am not yours to hold!
I am not yours to fold!
I'm the fire that you can't control,
I'm the body with no name,
every river, every flame,
pour it in me, pour it in me,
pour it in me, make me whole!
Lai-la! Lai-la! Nima-nima-ba!
Everything! Everything!
Haré salam!
Put your mouth where it burns.
Trace the line where the backbone turns.
Lower. Lower. Past the small
of my back, past the fall,
past the place polite tongues stop.
Taste me from the bottom to the top.
Every fold. Every crease.
Every part that begs release.
The salt between. The wet beneath.
The tender place below my teeth
where I will hold you, soft and slow,
and swallow deeper than you know.
I am not yours to hold!
I am not yours to fold!
I'm the fire that you can't control,
I'm the body with no name,
every river, every flame,
pour it in me, pour it in me,
pour it in me, make me whole!
Lai-la! Lai-la! Nima-nima-ba!
Everything! Everything!
Haré salam!
Watch what he does to me.
He takes the needle and he threads
not through my ear but through
the softest lip, the lowest one,
and I don't flinch. I bloom.
He pierces me where I am tenderest
and I say: again.
Because pain from open hands
is not pain. It's punctuation.
It's the body's way of saying:
I am here. I felt that. More.
He pours himself across my chest
and I am drenched and blessed
and every fluid is a river
and every river finds the sea
and the sea is me
and the sea is him
and you, dark man,
you stand on the shore
and you will never swim
because you're afraid to let the water in.
Now I climb and press him flat.
Pin his wrists like where-you're-at.
Feel him shake beneath my weight.
Feel him learn that love means wait.
I take the steel. I take the thread.
I stitch my name across his head.
Not to mark. Not to claim.
In this bed, there is no name.
I grip. He gives. He grips. I take.
We eat each other for the sake
of tasting everything alive
from lip to hip to deep inside.
I am not yours to hold!
I am not yours to fold!
I'm the fire that you can't control,
I'm the body with no name,
every river, every flame,
pour it in me, pour it in me,
pour it in me, make me whole!
Lai-la! Lai-la! Nima-nima-ba!
Everything! Everything!
Haré salam!
Now your turn. Tie me tight.
Not with rope. With appetite.
Hold me open. Hold me still.
Pour your everything until
I'm so full of you I burst
like a saint who died of thirst
and found the river at the end
and drank it all and drowned, amen.
Put your face where I am sweet
where the pulse and honey meet.
Listen to the song I sing
when the body's offering
everything it was taught to hide.
Come inside. Come inside.
You watched it all and what you saw
was flesh. Because that's all you know.
You missed the prayer inside the moan.
You missed the church inside the bone.
You think you want what we just did.
You don't. You want to keep the lid
on tight, and peek, and grip, and take.
But we just gave for giving's sake.
And giving is the thing you'll never learn
because you think the whole world has to burn
before you're warm.
We're warm already.
That's the difference.
I am not yours to hold!
I am not yours to fold!
I'm the fire that you can't control,
I'm the body with no name,
every river, every flame,
pour it in me, pour it in me,
pour it in me, make me whole!
Lai-la! Lai-la! Nima-nima-ba!
Everything! EVERYTHING!
HARÉ SALAM!
...lai-la... lai-la... nima-nima-su...
...pour it in me... make me whole...
...haré salam... haré salam...
...pai u...