The Flower Room

Lyrics

Down the main hall, past the closed doors.
Each one a held breath. Each one a different silence.
I am not going to the heart of the house today.
Just to the edge of it.

The heavy velvet of the Drawing Room seems to absorb all sound.
Further on, the clink of glass from the Conservatory, a world under a dome.
I turn away from the thick, sweet ghost of the Smoking Room, a conversation I don't want to overhear.
My hand is on a cooler doorknob now. Polished brass.

And the air changes. North-facing cool.
Smell of cut stems, wet earth, and the faint, sweet decay of petals in standing water.
Light falls in sheets across the marble tabletops.
Glass vases stand like empty sentences, waiting for words.
Copper cans hold my distorted face, a stranger with my eyes.
This is where the garden is brought inside to be taught manners.

To arrange a flower is to arrange a memory.
This lily for a birth in 1928, this rose for a goodbye in 1941.
The water in the vase doesn't reflect the ceiling.
It reflects a face that isn't mine, looking down at hands that are.
Every bouquet a silent conversation with a ghost.

Your hands knew this work. I remember them, or I remember the story of them.
The twine on the spool, the neat cut of the shears.
You taught the wilting peonies how to die beautifully.
You gave the thorns a purpose.
Did you talk to them, like I do? Did you tell them the things you couldn't say in the Dining Room?
These flowers hold more secrets than the walls do.
They drink them in with the water.

The snap of the shears on this rose stem has a color.
It's the precise, impossible blue of your dress at the summer party, 1952.
A sound I can see. A memory that isn't mine.
And here, in the ledger, between empty pages… a single pressed edelweiss.
From a mountain this house has never seen.

To arrange a flower is to arrange a memory.
This lily for a birth, this rose for a goodbye.
The water in the vase doesn't reflect the ceiling.
It reflects a sky over a mountain, a dress of impossible blue.
Every bouquet a silent conversation with a ghost.

I leave one stem on the table, uncut.
One question unanswered.
The room holds its cool breath around me.
The water in the tallest vase holds a perfect, tiny image of this room inside it.
Waiting.