The Master Bath

Lyrics

Out of the bed, the impression of your body already cooling. 
Past the threshold of the Dressing Room, where the empty hangers chime like bones.
I keep my eyes from the Portrait Hall, I will not be judged today.
I will not look at the Nursery door, I will not remember the light that used to leak from under it. 
This is the shortest walk in the house. 
And the longest.
The lock is home. The cold floor is an honest answer.
This is the only room where the water runs hot enough to steam the ghosts away.
Where the silver on the mirror is a membrane, a listening surface.
And I can finally ask the question, and not be afraid of my own face answering back.
The claw-foot tub stands waiting, a clean white coffin for a temporary death. 
This little bar of soap, worn to a curve, still smells of her lavender, from 1952.
The hexagonal tile is a map of a forgotten country. 
You said you hated it. I remember that now. I remember everything in here. The room keeps a better ledger than the Library.
The cold from the floor has a key, a low G sharp that hums up through the bones of my feet.
The steam crawls up the mirror, erasing the room behind me, erasing the last hundred years. 
And a face I don't know, a woman from a time I never lived, looks out from the silvering glass. Her mouth opens.
She is gone before she can speak. Or I am.
The lock holds. The cold floor is the only solid thing.
This is the room where the water runs hot enough to dissolve a life.
And the silver on the mirror is a closed eye, a silent surface.
I asked the question, and the steam gave me a stranger's face instead of an answer.
In the polished chrome of the faucet, the whole room is reflected. 
A tiny, bent world. Small enough to hold in my hand. Small enough to drown.