The Widow's Walk

Lyrics

Up from the Attic Landing, where the air gets thin and forgets the ground.
I keep my eyes from the door of the Sealed Attic Room. Its silence is a pressure, a hand on my back, pushing me on.
Past the dry, brittle smell of the Newspaper Archive, all the world's old sorrows stacked to the ceiling.
Then only the tight corkscrew stair, leading to a circle of light.
A small, heavy door.

And the sky pours in. All of it.
My hands find the iron rail before my eyes adjust. It’s cold, holding the memory of a January frost.
The world simplifies. Weathered planks under my shoes. Forged iron under my palms. And that one, unwavering line where the sea is cleanly severed from the sky.

They call this a widow's walk. A name that waits for a tragedy.
I am not a widow. You are not at sea.
But the house requires the posture of waiting, so I come here to perform it.
I come here to practice your absence. To stare at the horizon until it becomes a mirror showing nothing back.
The waiting is the thing. It has its own weather.

The iron railing doesn't reflect my face. It reflects hers. The woman from 1918, watching for a troopship that has already docked in another country, in another time. Then the woman from 1944, her hand shielding her eyes, her lips moving without a sound. We are a committee of watchers, sharing the same cold iron, the same empty view across a century of waves.

The sound arrives and leaves the taste of rust in my mouth. Cold iron. The flavor of an anchor chain pulled up from the deep. This is how the sea speaks. Not in water, but in metal and mourning. The horizon isn't a promise. It’s a blade. It's the edge of the world you could fall from.

They call this a widow's walk. I am not a widow. You are just downstairs, turning a page.
But this roof needs a ghost, so I come here to rehearse the ending.
I stand at the railing and watch the horizon, that clean, surgical cut.
And I wait. The waiting builds its own rooms inside me. A smaller house. All of it, this walk.

I remember the day your ship sailed. Perfectly. The white trail in the water. Waving until my arm was numb.
You took the train. You were gone for a weekend.
I remember the ship. Or I remember remembering it.
The difference closed a long time ago.