{"id":43678,"date":"2022-08-29T13:08:58","date_gmt":"2022-08-29T17:08:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/?p=43678"},"modified":"2022-08-29T17:52:33","modified_gmt":"2022-08-29T21:52:33","slug":"song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/poetry\/song\/","title":{"rendered":"Song"},"content":{"rendered":"<script>\nfunction showWarning_enUS() {\n    var content_warning_list = document.getElementById(\"content-warning-enUS\");\n\n    if (content_warning_list.style.display === \"none\") {\n        content_warning_list.style.display = \"block\";\n    } else {\n        content_warning_list.style.display = \"none\";\n    }\n}\n<\/script><div lang=\"en-US\" dir=\"ltr\" class=\"content-warning-container-ltr\"><p><strong class=\"content-warning-title\">Content warning:<\/strong><br\/><button onclick=\"showWarning_enUS()\">Show warnings<\/button><\/p><div class=\"content-warning\" id=\"content-warning-enUS\" style=\"display: none;\" ><p>This page contains: <\/p><ul><li>Body transformation<\/li><\/ul><\/div><br\/><\/div>\n<p>The moment we played the song of her spring<br \/>\na startling change washed over my aunt\u2014<\/p>\n<p>only her eyes remained closed in sleep,<br \/>\nbut her age poured off everything<br \/>\nelse, her features slipping backwards<br \/>\nin time as the melody slipped through her ear<br \/>\nand kick-started the hidden, rusty mechanisms<\/p>\n<p>of the body: new ink trickling<br \/>\nthrough each hair, skin smoothing out<br \/>\nlike a shirt pressed under an unseen iron,<br \/>\nlips unfurling upwards like budding leaves,<br \/>\nhaving released the weights that had grown<br \/>\nheavy with years below the jaw.<\/p>\n<p>By the chorus she was a young woman again.<\/p>\n<p>We dared not wake her, afraid of breaking the spell.<br \/>\nSurely this was what people meant<br \/>\nwhen they spoke of music\u2019s healing properties\u2014<br \/>\nhow it reminds the body that it was once<br \/>\nfree of pain and full of possibilities.<\/p>\n<p>Quietly and methodically<br \/>\nwe lined up song after song<br \/>\nuntil we had a playlist that unfolded<br \/>\nacross her decades\u2014it would steer her<br \/>\nthrough a dream lasting lifetimes.<br \/>\nBut after a few days of this, we realized<br \/>\nshe would soon starve unless she woke up<br \/>\nto eat. If she lived<br \/>\nin beautiful young sleep forever<br \/>\nshe might as well have been dead.<br \/>\nSlowly we wound down the music,<br \/>\nhoping it had undone enough damage \u2026<\/p>\n<p>As if she had been waiting for this intermission,<br \/>\nher lids lifted like heavy curtains, the night<br \/>\nwithin her peering out through the dark marbles<br \/>\nof her eyes, wet and tired, recalling who<br \/>\nshe now was. Trapped. She had to come back<br \/>\nand so she was back, our aunt, our dear old aunt.<\/p>\n<br class=\"clear_both\"\/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By the chorus she was a young woman again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[730],"class_list":["post-43678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","tag-no-content-warning"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s82q22-song","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43678"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44223,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43678\/revisions\/44223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}