The Letter Room

Lyrics

I'm climbing again. Past the second floor landing, past the averted eyes of The Portrait Hall. Don't look at them. They know where I'm going. Up the narrow stairs to the last door, the one that leads to the Attic Landing. The air thins here, cools. It always knows.

I hurry past The Doll Room, a scent of cedar and judgment seeping from its threshold. I never look at that door. Never. The Suitcase Room is to the left, full of journeys that ended, but this room… this room is for journeys that never began. The brass knob is cold. Here we are.

Hello, silences. Hello, archive of the held tongue. A hundred years of words trapped in paper cages. The pigeonholes climb the walls, a city of sealed mouths, a library of almosts. And I came here to find your voice, didn't I?

The mahogany slant-top desk is filmed in the dust of decades. Ribbons, brittle and faded, bind letters by the year. 1924. 1958. 1993. So many hands, so much restraint. The brass letter opener gleams, engraved with an initial that isn't yours, that isn't mine. It feels like a weapon that has never been used.

And in its slot, the letter. Violet ink. Your script, I think. The wax seal is a crow, perfect and unbroken. But in my memory, it's shattered. I remember opening it. The smell of the ink has a sound, you see. It’s the precise, soft click of the nursery door latching in the summer of 1932. And I remember the words inside, the ones that would have saved us. Or maybe I just wrote them myself, on the back of the air, a long time ago.

Hello, silences. Hello, archive of the held tongue. All these words trapped in their paper cages. The pigeonholes are full of smaller rooms, just like this one, each holding a single, unwritten thought. I came here to find your voice, and found only my own invention.

The letter is here. The crow is whole. My memory was the only trespass. Are you still waiting for my reply? Are you waiting at all?