The Dressing Room

Lyrics

Up from the Servant's Stair Landing, turning from the hum of the house's heart.
The long wall of the Portrait Hall to my left, a gallery of judging stillness. 
I pass the door to the Sick Room, its silence is a weight I choose not to carry today. 
Further on, the Master Bedroom is ajar, a slice of rumpled sheets and morning light. 
But I am not going there.
I am going to the space that serves it.
The narrow door, the transition, the pause made architectural.
This is the hinge. The hyphen between being and appearing.
The calculated breath before the performance begins.
A small room built around a mirror, which is a room built around a question: who will you be?
The air is cedar and lavender, a dry, patient scent.
The wardrobes stand like sentinels, holding the shapes of people who are gone. 
A ghost of perfume from 1965, the faint, clean smell of starch on a collar never worn.
I run a hand over a velvet robe. It remembers a fire, a glass of sherry, a decision made alone. The objects here are accomplices to transformation.
This is the hinge. The hyphen between being and appearing.
The calculated breath before the performance begins.
A small room built around a mirror, which is a room built around a question: who will you be?
The triptych mirror unfolds. It isn't a reflection, it's a committee. 
One panel holds the girl I was, reaching for her mother's pearls. 
Another holds the man I might have been, straightening a tie I never owned.
And the center holds this quiet space, this catalog of possible selves. 
A floorboard creaks under my weight, and the sound is the precise color of the rust on the key to the littlest drawer. Inside that drawer, another mirror, face down.
I stand at the threshold of the threshold. 
Neither entering nor leaving. 
This is the engine room of the self.
The door to the world waits on one side. The door to the dream waits on the other. 
And here, I am only the crossing.