The Card Room

Lyrics

Leaving the silence of The Study for a different kind.
The polished floorboards reflect the gas lamps like a dark, still water.
Down the main hall, past the spine-bound quiet of The Library.
A thread of light from under the Drawing Room door, a murmur of voices I don't need tonight.
I turn my shoulder to the sound spilling from the Music Room...
Too much feeling in that minor key. Too much truth.
I'm seeking a more elegant deception.
Here. The brass knob, cool as a final card.
The air is thick with what's been wagered here.
Cigar ghosts from 1897, the sharp scent of lemon oil on the mahogany.
Four green baize islands, waiting under the low, steady hum of the gas lamps.
This is where men come to become architecture. Angles, odds, and a foundation of silence.
Shuffle, cut, and deal. The slow, hydraulic press of ritual.
The only faces that matter here are the one-eyed jacks, the suicidal king, the painted queen.
We are just the hands they move with, the temporary thrones they occupy for an evening.
It's a currency of glances, a silent auction of nerve, played out on the green baize stage.
The ivory chips are cool, worn smooth by a century of anxious thumbs.
When one clicks against the table's inlay, the sound has the exact, cold weight of a secret someone died with.
I make the same fold my father made, his ghost-reflection in the polished wood just beneath my own.
His tell was a stillness in his left hand. Or I remember being told that. The difference closed long ago.
In the oldest table, there’s a secret drawer for the private games, the ones with no chips at all.
I've never seen it opened, but I know what's inside.
Another table, perfectly small, a miniature of this one.
And on its surface, the game we're playing is already laid out, already finished.
We're just acting out the memory of a hand that was dealt before we were born.
The cards go back in the box.
The kings and queens sleep side-by-side.
The green felt breathes out the ghosts of every bluff, every win, every perfectly executed lie.
The room keeps the score. The room always keeps the score.