The Music Room

Lyrics

I knew the way here by the feel of the floorboards.
Past the Library, past the Morning Room.
Your door.

The air is still inside.
Heavy with the dust of unsung notes.
The Steinway lid is down, a dark mirror.
I could write my name on it.
Could trace the ghost of your hands on the keys.
The velvet on the bench is worn thin, right where you sat.
Every thread a memory of your weight.

This room doesn't hold instruments.
It holds the shape of the sound you made.
A silence that remembers melody.
The air itself is sheet music,
written with the way you breathed before a difficult passage.
This is where I come to hear you.

I remember October, 1988.
The window sweating with a cool afternoon.
You were trying to find your way through Satie.
Gymnopédie Number One.
And you laughed, that quiet laugh,
when your fingers stumbled.
The sunlight cut across the floorboards,
and for a moment, the dust motes danced to your timing.

This room doesn't hold instruments.
It holds the shape of the sound you made.
A silence that remembers melody.
The air itself is sheet music,
written with the way you breathed before a difficult passage.
This is where I come to hear you.

They say a house has a memory.
But it's just wood and plaster.
We are the memory.
We haunt the spaces we loved.
I press my ear to the cold wood of the piano.
I'm not listening for a chord.
Just the echo of your presence.
The resonance of a life still warm.

I close the door softly.
Leave the silence to its work.
Leave you to your song.