The Grandmother's Room

Lyrics

I take the back way up. Up from the Back Hall, leaving the scent of beeswax and silver polish behind.
The Servant's Stair Landing doesn't judge. Its wood is worn by purpose, not by leisure.
On the second floor, the air changes. I turn my face from the Sick Room, from the memory of fevered towels. That door stays closed today.
The light from the Hallway Window Seat is thick with dust, a slow-motion waterfall.
But my hand is for this door. The one without a nameplate.
And the air is here. Not stale. Preserved. Held under glass.
It's always a July afternoon from 1923 inside, the sun sliced thin and clean by the transom window.
The cane-seat rocker makes a sound like it's breathing in, even when it’s empty.
On the floor plan, this room is just the Back Bedroom. A rectangle waiting for a purpose. But the house knows better.
This is the room of the careful hand, an archive of folded things.
A ledger with a missing name, a history told in lavender and cedar.
The cedar chest is the room inside the room. Its lock is the real threshold.
Open it, and you don't find linens. You find the memory of folding them.
I kneel on the worn rug. The smell of camphor has a sound here, the exact pitch of the rocker's slow creak. A dry, patient rhythm.
I lift the heavy, fragrant lid. Linens, stacked bone-white, each crease a decision made a lifetime ago.
The family bible, its leather thirsty for an oiling it will never get. Inside, a single violet, pressed into a ghost of purple.
I remember her, or I remember the order she left behind.
The perfect stack of sheets, the mothball's bitter perfume, the weight of the Bible in my lap.
Is a person the life they lived, or the things they saved from time?
The difference closed a long time ago. She is the catalogue of her own effects.
She is the jar, and the label, and the thing sealed safe inside.
This is the room of the careful hand, an archive of folded things.
A ledger with a missing name, a history told in lavender and cedar.
The cedar chest is the room inside the room. Its lock is the real threshold.
Open it, and you don't find linens. You find the memory of folding them.
The rocker moves. Just an inch.
Stirred by a draft from the transom, the only ghost I'll permit.
The contents are secure. The name on the label is worn away.