The Kitchen

Lyrics

Down the main hall, past the clock that lies about the hour.
The air changes here. The polish and perfume give way to work.

I pass the Dining Room door, a mouth shut after a feast that ended decades ago. 
And I keep the Parlor to my left, always to my left.
I don’t need to feel the weight of its velvet silence today.
Its memory of conversations held like caged birds.
No. I’m heading for the engine.
Through the swinging door of the Butler's Pantry, a quick breath held in a narrow space between two worlds.

And then, arrival.
The warmth hits first. A complicated warmth of pilot lights and yeast, of last night’s onions and the ghost of a thousand mornings' coffee.
The floorboards are worn into a shallow dip before the soapstone sink.
My feet find the shape of other women’s feet.
And in the center of it all, a great oak table. Not for show. For everything.

This is the heartwood. The house’s true ledger.
Every chop mark a word, every burn a signature.
This map of heat and knives, this altar of flour and dough.
It remembers the weight of elbows, the damp rings of glasses, the rhythm of the rolling pin when the house was hungry and the house was sad.

The gas range hums a low, steady tune. But I can see the ghost of the coal stove beside it, a black iron memory that still radiates a heat only I can feel.
They cooked the 1929 Thanksgiving on that.
I hear the drip of the iceman’s block in the corner where the refrigerator now breathes its cold, electric sigh.
The ghost of holiday bread for a Christmas cancelled by the flu of 1918. I remember the smell of it not baking.

The groan of the pipes in the wall has the exact gray color of laundry soap from 1948. A sound you can smell.
I catch my reflection in a copper pot, but the face isn’t mine.
It’s a woman from a photograph I’ve never seen, her hair pulled back tight, her expression tired but clear.
The pot shows me the kitchen inside the kitchen.
She nods once, and is gone.

This is the heartwood. The house’s true ledger.
Every chop mark a word, every burn a signature.
This map of heat and knives, this altar of flour and dough.
It remembers the weight of elbows, the damp rings of glasses, the rhythm of the rolling pin when the house was hungry and the house was sad.

I wipe the table down.
The smell of damp oak. 
The day is done, or the day is about to begin.
The ledger is clean again. Waiting.