Song 63: Self-Sacrificial

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1]
My mother ate standing up
For the first twelve years of my life
Not because she preferred it
But because standing up
Meant the chair was free
And the chair being free
Meant I could sit
And the sitting
Meant the meal looked like enough
For everyone
And it was
Because she'd eaten before I arrived
A handful of rice
In the kitchen
Where the mathematics
Of not enough
Were done quietly
With no calculator
Just a mother's hands
Dividing by love
And arriving at an answer
That was always:
Give her mine

[Pre-Chorus]
And the give her mine
Was not sacrifice
In her vocabulary
In her vocabulary
It was Tuesday
It was the obvious answer
To a question
No one else had noticed
Was being asked

[Chorus]
L'amour sacrificiel, l'amour sacrificiel
The love that ate standing up so the chair was free
L'amour sacrificiel, l'amour sacrificiel
Not martyrdom — arithmetic
There wasn't enough
So you subtracted yourself
From the equation
And the equation balanced
And the balancing
Looked like dinner
And dinner looked like enough
And enough
Was your greatest
Performance

[Verse 2]
I do it now
And I didn't notice
Until I caught myself
Standing at the counter
Eating the heel of the bread
Before anyone woke
So the good slices
Would be all that was visible
When the bread was seen

And I thought
This is her
In my hands
In my posture
In the particular angle
Of a woman
Eating the worst piece
In the best light
So the plate
Tells a different story
Than the kitchen

Bà ngoại did it too
Her mother did it too
The standing and the heel of the bread
And the quiet mathematics
Going back
Through women
Whose names I don't know
But whose posture
I would recognize
In any kitchen
In any century
The posture of someone
Subtracting herself
So the sum
Comes out right

[Chorus]
L'amour sacrificiel, l'amour sacrificiel
The love that ate standing up so the chair was free
L'amour sacrificiel, l'amour sacrificiel
Handed down through women
Like a recipe
No one wrote
Because the recipe
Was the body
And the body
Remembered the portions
Without being told

[Bridge]
The hard question
Is whether this is love
Or whether this is damage
Dressed in an apron
With good lighting

Because the oxytocin system
Rewards self-sacrifice
The same way
It rewards connection
Which means
The brain cannot tell the difference
Between giving
And disappearing
And some women
Have been disappearing
For generations
And calling it dinner


And I don't have the answer
I have the heel of the bread
And my mother's posture
And the question
Which is:
When does the giving
Become the gone
And who is counting
And is the counting
Also love

I don't know
But I'm sitting down now
And the bread has good slices
And I'm taking one

And the taking
Feels like the bravest thing
My hands have done
Since the last time
They looked like hers

[Outro]
L'amour sacrificiel