The Cloakroom

Lyrics

Down the main stair, where my footsteps are strangers.
The Foyer is just an echo saying hello and goodbye.
I pass the Drawing Room, not today, not for that perfect, breathless quiet.
Past the Study door, where the air still holds the shape of old arguments.
I'm going to the room that keeps the outside out.
The brass knob is cold. 
And the air is thick with cedar, damp wool, and the lavender sachet that died in 1952. 
Just rows of hooks, worn bright by the weight of the world being taken off, shoulder by shoulder. 
A low bench for the boots that walked through mud a lifetime ago.
Every coat a hollowed self.
Every sleeve an empty limb.
A quiet congregation of every body that ever passed through.
This isn't where things are stored. It's where they are shed.
Left hanging, the cold shape of the person you were, out there.
This child's coat, pockets full of secrets and stones from 1968.
This heavy tweed... I remember the man, or maybe just the coat that wore him.
It holds the scent of a winter he never returned from. A cold that never thawed.
He is just a hook now, but the weight is the same.
I lean in close to a collar.
The metallic smell of rain is a sound—the precise, lonely note of a ship's horn in the fog.
The wardrobe mirror across the way shows the room without me in it.
And in its silver surface, a smaller wardrobe shows a smaller room, on and on, a hallway of absences, perfectly kept.
Every coat a hollowed self.
Every sleeve an empty limb.
A quiet congregation of every body that ever passed through.
This isn't where things are stored. It's where they are shed.
Left hanging, the cold shape of the person you were, out there.
My own jacket comes off. 
Another ghost for the rail.
The door clicks shut.
The dark is heavy with wool and waiting.