The Butler's Pantry

Lyrics

I walk the gloss of the main hall. Past the Foyer mirror where a stranger’s coat hangs. 
I don't turn toward the low laughter spilling from under the Drawing Room door tonight. 
I am not a guest. I am not a cook.
I follow the wainscoting past the grand, still face of the Dining Room, avoiding its expectant quiet. 
My hand finds the smaller door, the one with no name, the one that only answers to pressure.

And the house splits in two. 
This is the hinge. The cool, quiet airlock between the heat and the performance. 
A waypoint of porcelain and polished steel.
Not the fire of the stove, not the theatre of the table. 
This is the held breath between.

Here, shelves hold perfect, silent stacks of bone china. A city of plates waiting for a populace. 
The silver, in its beds of dark green felt, sleeps without dreaming. 
I pick up the serving platter. Its surface is a curved mirror.
It reflects the pantry, and in that reflection, a smaller platter reflecting a smaller pantry. 
The world doubles inward until it vanishes into a point of light. 
A map of a room that contains the map.

The chill rising from the marble counter has a sound. A low, clean hum, the precise frequency of a lock turning in the silver safe. 
It’s the sound of potential. 
This surface remembers the fleeting warmth of a soup tureen in 1952, the sharp edge of a fallen knife, the ghost-weight of dishes long since shattered. 
It holds the plan for a feast that never happened, the diagram of an impeccable service.

The swinging door is the only moving thing. A lung breathing in the clang of the Scullery, breathing out the loaded, perfect silence of a tray. 
It separates what is made from what is presented. 
It is the beginning of the story for them, and the end of it for us. A threshold that is also a wall.

Waiting. 
The ledger on the desk lists every spoon. The last entry reads: one silver platter, reflecting a hand. 
My hand. 
The door waits to swing again.