The Forgotten Christmas Room

Lyrics

Up the narrow stairs. Where the air gets thin and smells like old paper and sleep.

I go past the Doll Room. Their glass eyes are open in the dark, they follow me. I don’t look left, where the door to the Taxidermy Room is always cold, a patch of winter on the wall. I hold my breath until I’m through the wide, quiet space of the Main Attic. Under the big beams where the dust falls like slow-motion snow. There's a little door at the very back. It has no name on it. It has no key.

The handle turns without a sound. It is always December in here. Always the night before. The air is waiting for a morning that the rest of the house forgot to have. A string of useless lights droops from one box to another, a dead vine.

This is the room of almost. The perpetual eve. The place where the presents are wrapped but never opened. And the cardboard angel on the highest box has one wing, pointing to a calendar page that says 24 and will always say 24. It’s not sad. It’s just… quiet. A held breath that never lets go.

In a wooden crate, the glass balls from 1951 are cold in my hands. Inside one, a tiny painted town sleeps under a layer of real dust that looks like perfect frost. I don't shake it. I don't want to wake them. I remember being told I loved this one best, but I only remember the telling of it. The memory isn’t mine. It belongs to the room now.

That sound. It is the exact color of the little bird ornament, the pale, faded blue one whose tail is a crack in the glass. The sound of broken blue. That is the only sound in here. The boxes are stacked like a city for ghosts, and inside each one is a smaller map of this room, with even smaller boxes waiting inside. It goes on forever.

This is the room of almost. The perpetual eve. The place where the presents are wrapped but never opened. And the cardboard angel on the highest box has one wing, pointing to a calendar page that says 24 and will always say 24. It’s not sad. It’s just… quiet. A held breath that never lets go.

I close the door. So gently. The waiting can keep waiting. The rest of the house has other years. But in here… It's always Christmas. Almost.