The Night Nursery

Lyrics

I. The Journey
The last bell has been rung. Up from the first floor, a ghost of laughter, then nothing. I drift down the Portrait Hall, and their painted eyes are closed tonight. Good. I pass the Hallway Window Seat, a block of frozen moonlight on the floorboards. The door to the Sick Room is a pale rectangle I don't look at. Its silence is too loud. Past the day Nursery, where the bright toys are sleeping a loud, colored sleep. My hand is on the next knob. The brass is still warm from Nurse's hand.

II. The Ode
And I'm inside. The air changes here. It's thick with the smell of warmed flannel and the ghost of coal from the grate. The gas jet is a tiny blue seed of light, and in the corner, the salt lamp makes the shadows move. Hello, shadows. Hello, tall man made of wardrobe. Hello, hunched beast made of armchair. They are the true furniture of this room. The bed is a boat. The floor is a cold, dark sea.

Here, the big house is the toy. And the dollhouse in the corner is the real one. I can see it. A perfect copy, with tiny lamps that burn with no fire. And inside its night nursery, another, smaller house. And another. The last one is small as my heart, and it beats with the same rhythm. This is the room inside the room. This is the place where sleep begins.

This room remembers being for a boy. The rocking horse shifts, just a little, creaking for a rider who left in 1932. There are scratches by the window from a crib that isn't mine. I was never that small here. Or maybe I was, and I remember remembering it. The wallpaper has ships on it. If you stare, they sail away from the plaster, across the ceiling, on a sea of quiet breath. The lead soldier on the mantelpiece remembers a battle I haven't fought yet.

The silence has a shape tonight. It has the precise, cool weight of the porcelain doll's face, staring from her chair. I feel it on my own skin. A sound so quiet it becomes a temperature. Am I awake? The doll in the smallest house just opened her eyes. She looks like me.

Here, the big house is the toy. And the dollhouse in the corner is the real one. Its tiny lamps burn with no fire. And inside its night nursery, another, smaller house. And another. The last one is small as my heart, and it beats with the same rhythm. This is the room inside the room. This is the place where sleep begins.

The boat is drifting now. The wardrobe-man is waving goodbye. The wallpaper ships have reached the far wall. The tiny blue seed of light is the only star. The house inside the house inside the house... is sleeping now. And I am too.