lyrics

You went to live on a cold moon
And I missed you more than I missed anything in my life before
I built a house with a warm wide wood kitchen
That was empty except for me (though I latched the door)
We still murmur to each other across the static
You know better than just to let me be
I say I’ll pull the mattress out of the attic
If you want to come down and see
But you always say
‘This is where we all are now’
You’ll send a shuttle down to fetch me

Fetching me to your cold moon
All your silicate vistas in blue and white
I almost agree to it
On the quietest nights
But this year I have grown potatoes
I’ve been healing this spoiled soil that was abandoned to me
You should see them, all rounded and oven-brown
You could taste them, if only you’d come down
Come down and see

I used to live on the cold moon
And I used to sleep in a white box with a hard blue floor
And you on a screen with the options and menus
To select our activities if we wanted more
And they let me go freely back to land
But they were terribly disappointed in me
They say you’ll miss my preferences and patterns
As if that was all we could be
But now in the dust there are a few more of us
More of us starting to see

When did you stop searching?
When did you exchange the pull of the surf
For waiting for the trickles off the sugar mountain
Pushed back in a cold cage beyond the earth?
But this year there are new connections
A diaspora of knowledge carried among us quite free
You could read it, all open and unbound
You could learn it, if only you’d come down
Come down and see

credits

from Five Thousand Feathers, released October 4, 2024
Helen Bell: vocals, piano, violin, recorders
Xenogon: five-string electric guitar, drums, bass guitar, piano sound design
Words and music by Helen Bell; arranged by Helen Bell and Xenogon

All content © H. Bell 2025 | 100% human – no AI is used to make this site or its contents

license

All rights reserved. Use of this work to train so-called AI is explicitly prohibited.