The Pantry

Lyrics

Down from the heart of the house. Down from the second floor.

Past the dark oils of the Portrait Hall, all those judging eyes. I never look.
Down the main stair, where the air thins out and becomes presentable.
I feel the pull of the Dining Room, its heavy silver silence, and turn away.
Not today. Not that kind of empty.
I'm seeking a different quiet. The working quiet.
Past the hiss of the Scullery, to the small pine door that smells of a hundred winters.

And the room is a ledger. A library of sealed summers.
Each jar a page, each label a date.
Rows on rows of patient glass, holding the light of Augusts long gone.
This is the order. The quiet line drawn against the blurring of years.
This is the inventory of what we chose to save.

The cool of the stone floor through my shoes. The air thick with the memory of vinegar and spice.
My finger traces a line in the dust on a shelf.
Peaches, 1934. Tomatoes, 1968. Their color is muted, but the idea of their sweetness is still sharp.
I remember the steam in the kitchen, or I remember the story of the steam. The difference closed a long time ago.
The careful script on the labels, changing with the decades. A genealogy of hands.

But the real accounting isn't alphabetical.
Third shelf from the top. Behind the beets from 1971.
There. The ceramic rabbit with the chipped left ear.
The cookie jar that never held a single cookie.
It holds the weight. Under a dead tablet, its screen a black mirror reflecting my face, but younger.
The scorch mark on the bottom, facing the wall. This is the catalogue that catalogues the house.

This room is a ledger. A library of sealed secrets.
Each jar a promise, each shadow a debt.
Rows on rows of patient glass, holding the weight of things we never said.
This is the order. The quiet line drawn against the truth.
This is the inventory of what we chose to save.

The smell of the pickling salt from that jar of beets, the one from 1971, has the precise flat gray color of a secret kept too long.
I touch the rabbit's head.
The lid stays on.