The Dress Form Room

Lyrics

Up from the second floor, past the long silence of the Portrait Hall. I won't look at them today. Their faces are answers. I am looking for the questions.

Past the Servant's Stair Landing, where the air always feels colder, a draft from a life I never lived. The steps get steeper, narrower. The attic breathes down, a smell of cedar and dry paper and dust that has settled for a century. I put my hand on the wall to steady myself. I feel the pull of the Letter Room, all those paper voices folded into squares. Not today. I hurry past the Doll Room door, closed tight. I can feel their glass eyes through the wood. An audience I don't want.

And here. Your door. The click echoes. And the room opens. And you are all still here, waiting in the slanted light from the dormer. My silent council of shapes. The bodies without the burden of breath. The women made of wire, and padding, and papier-mâché.

Hello, again. I touch your shoulder, the one from 1914. Your stockinette skin is worn smooth where her hands adjusted the cloth. I see the phantom line of a waist she wanted, or the one she had. You remember her. You hold her posture in your very frame. And you, the nickel-plated stand gleaming, you were for the debutante dress of 1947. The silk is still pinned at the hem, a whisper of a promise that was never kept. You hold the shape of what might have been.

On the shelf, a doll-sized form, a perfect copy of you, wears a miniature version of a dress that never existed outside this room. A memory of a memory. I turn you towards the light. That sound, that drag of wood on oak… it has the precise, dusty color of her blue tailor's chalk. I can almost see the hand of the seamstress, Mrs. H., leaving a mark that was meant to be temporary.

And you are all still here. My silent council of shapes. Waiting in the slanted light. The bodies without the burden of breath. The beautiful, hollow women. You know the secrets of the fabric, the tension in a stitch. You knew our bodies better than we did.

I see my own faint reflection in your steel neck brace. But the face is not mine. It's hers. Or it's the idea of her. You hold the space a person leaves. You are the perfect listeners. I'll be back.