The Master Bedroom

Lyrics

Second floor, west wing.
The end of the hall.
The door was unlocked.
Of course it was.
I came here looking for a story.
The heart of the house, the center of the ledger.
I pulled the deeds from the county archive, dusted off the tax rolls from 1902.
Found his name, of course. Bold ink on a crisp line.
And next to it, a space.
Just a space.
The census taker in 1910, he must have skipped this address.
Or the dog was barking. Or the rain was bad that day.
No children listed.
No servants accounted for.
Just a man, on a plot of land, in a house that isn't here.
This is the master bedroom.
The room of perfect absence.
No dent in the mattress that was never there.
No ghost of her perfume in the air.
The sunlight on the floorboards shows no scuffs, no wear, no trace of a dance.
Just a clean page in a book that was never bound.
A silence that answers every question.
I ran my hand along the wall where the headboard should have been.
Smooth plaster. Cool to the touch.
No shadow where a portrait of a severe-looking ancestor might have hung.
The closet is empty.
Not even a forgotten cedar block.
The air doesn't smell of lavender or mothballs or old wool.
It doesn't smell of anything.
It is the recorded absence of scent.
This is the master bedroom.
The room of perfect absence.
No dent in the mattress that was never there.
No ghost of her perfume in the air.
The sunlight on the floorboards shows no scuffs, no wear, no trace of a dance.
Just a clean page in a book that was never bound.
A silence that answers every question.
And you have to wonder.
Was it a kindness? A deliberate erasure?
Did she ask to be forgotten?
Did he build a monument to nothing?
Or is this just the way of things.
The archive fails. The ink fades.
The stories we think are written in stone are just whispers in an empty room.
The dust motes turn in the afternoon light.
They settle on a floor that remembers no one.
No one at all.
The door was unlocked.
I'll leave it that way.