The Attic Landing

Lyrics

Up from the second floor, the last turn of the Servant's Stair. The Portrait Hall is a gallery of ghosts I don't acknowledge. I feel the gravity of the Master Bedroom far below, a history I am ascending from. The air thins. The sound of the house falls away behind me.

Arrival. Not a room, a proposition. A floor plane, wall planes, a set of apertures. One bare bulb draws a circle of imperfect light on the raw floor. Everything outside this circle is a gentler darkness, a volume held in reserve.

The silence that prefaces the archive. The pause before the catalogue. It holds nothing but the doorways. The Box Room, a sealed rectangle. The Manuscript Room, a line of shadow. The landing is an index made of dust, offering only what it is not.

This wood remembers the architect's pencil. The plumb line. Built to hold the weight of transit, the brief hesitation. Left, to the Forgotten Christmas Room. Right, to the Suitcase Room. It measures the distance between what is kept, and what is kept but never opened. A diagram of postponement.

The dormer is a cataract of old glass, casting a blade of sun. Its hard shadow on the planks has a sound, a low B-flat of pure termination. In the dusty pane, I see the landing reflected, and within it, a smaller landing, holding a smaller silence.

The silence that prefaces the archive. The pause before the catalogue. It holds nothing but the doorways. The Box Room, a sealed rectangle. The Manuscript Room, a line of shadow. The landing is an index made of dust, offering only what it is not.

The sun shifts. The blade retracts. The B-flat is gone. Only the circle of light remains. The landing doesn't wait for a person. It waits for a choice. The emptiness that gives the other rooms their name.