The Second Daughter's Room

Lyrics

I leave the Back Hall, the scent of soap and bleach still on my hands. 
The first floor is done for the day. Its face is clean for the world.
Up the grand stairs, my hand on the banister, worn smooth by a hundred years of purpose.

Second floor. The heart. I pass the Portrait Hall, all those documented eyes.
They have names in the book, dates on their stones. Their gaze follows, but it’s a known weight.
I don't turn toward the Master Bedroom; that sleep is not my business today.
Just this corridor. Past the Nursery, where the ghosts are at least remembered.
This door is last. Plain, white. The brass knob has no patina. It's polished too often to earn one.

And the door opens on the room for the unwritten name.
Where the work was real but the reason was a story told once and then forgotten.
This is the ledger's blank page. A bed made every morning for a girl who never woke up in it. 
A space kept, not for a memory, but for the shape of an absence.

I run a hand along the desk. No nicks from a penknife, no spilled ink. Perfect.
It was my job, and her job before me, to keep it perfect.
The cherrywood bedframe gleams. The quilt is a pattern of pale, unopened flowers. 
I open the window. The sash is stiff. It needs oil. I make a note. The air that comes in is the only new thing here.

The silence in here is so complete it has a scent. It smells of ironed, folded cotton, sharp and white. 
This room doesn't remember a child. It remembers the smell of my lemon polish in 1993, and Martha's lavender water in 1947. 
It contains a perfect, small version of itself in the dresser mirror—a room just as empty, just as clean.
We didn't preserve her memory. We performed the maintenance of a space where a memory was supposed to go.

This is the room for the unwritten name.
Where the work was real but the reason was a story told once and then forgotten.
This is the ledger's blank page. A bed made every morning for a girl who never woke up in it. 
A space kept, not for a memory, but for the shape of an absence.

I close the door. The latch clicks shut.
Another week until it needs dusting.
The work is the only part of the story that's true.