[Verse 1] By daylight she answered to everyone's call. Daughter at one door. Wife at another. Mother when small feet crossed the hall. She measured grain. She folded cloth. She knew which jar was running low. By evening there was ivy in her hair. She told no one where she'd go. [Verse 2] Beyond the walls the torches climbed. The mountain swallowed every road. A drum began beneath the singing. Someone placed a thyrsus in her hold. Fawnskin rough against her shoulder. Pine smoke bitter on her tongue. The aulos bent one note so strangely that she laughed before the song had begun. [Chorus] She danced until the "she" went missing, till the drum outlived her name, till the hand around the thyrsus felt as borrowed as the flame. No one's wife. No one's mother. No one's answer. No one's own. She had spent her life belonging. Now she belonged to what belonged to no one. [Verse 3] They ran beneath the leaning pines. Hair came loose. The torches reeled. One woman fell and rose up laughing as if falling had been healed. Wine stained mouths. The ground shook back. A hundred feet became one sound. She threw her head toward the stars and felt the sky come rushing down. The tree trunks breathed. The moon grew close. Her heartbeat moved outside her chest. The woman she'd been that afternoon seemed like a story someone else had dressed. [Chorus] She danced until the "she" went missing, till the drum outlived her name, till the hand around the thyrsus felt as borrowed as the flame. No one's wife. No one's mother. No one's answer. No one's own. She had spent her life belonging. Now she belonged to what belonged to no one. [Bridge] Then somewhere far below the ridge her sleeping child entered her mind. For one sweet second he was not hers. No duty. No fear. No tie. And she loved that second. That was what frightened her. Because if no one was anyone, then neither was the boy. His face came back: sleep-warm, serious, one fist closed beneath his cheek. The drums did not grow quieter. But something in their meaning changed. [Verse 4] She danced harder after that. Not to disappear. To learn the difference between a door and being locked inside it. She could be mother without being only mother. Wife without being owned. Daughter without remaining someone's child. The mountain did not give her a secret name beneath the rest. It gave her something stranger: no final name at all. [Final Chorus] She danced until the "she" went missing, till the drum outlived her name. Then dawn returned the body's borders, one by one, from flame to flame. Someone's wife. Someone's mother. Someone's daughter. All still true. She walked home carrying every name and knowing none of them was all of her. [Outro] Her husband called her name. She turned. Her child called, "Mother." She turned again. A dry leaf of ivy fell beside the door.
