The Pergola

Lyrics

Up from the heart. Away from the second floor hum.

I leave the Wife's Sitting Room, the velvet chair still holding a shape that isn't mine.
Past the top of the main stairs, the slow turn of the Servant's Stair Landing.
I choose the narrow flight up.
The air cools, thins. The smell of dust and finality.
The Attic Landing is a pause, a breath before the last choice.
The Letter Room door is closed. The silence from it is louder than a shout.
Not today. I can't read those voices today.
Forward, to the small iron-banded door. The one that promises escape.

And the sky opens. Not all at once.
It opens in a grid.
A lattice of cedar and sunlight. You are here.
The Pergola. A ceiling made of gaps.

The wood is warm under my hand. Silvered by a hundred years of weather.
Wisteria, thick as an arm, makes a muscle of the uprights.
The floorboards are a map of light and shadow, a perfect, silent language.
This pattern of darkness on the bright wood... I trace it with my foot.
A cage for the light, or a ladder for the sky. I was never sure.
You said it was a chessboard for ghosts.

I remember the year they built you, 1923. Just raw cedar bleeding sap.
And the vines, green threads reaching for a grip.
Now you hold the weight of it all.
The hard line of your shadow on the deck hums a low, resonant G.
It’s a sound my eyes can hear, a vibration that settles in the bone.
The shape of order, drawn on the floor.

And the sky opens. Not all at once.
It opens in a grid.
A lattice of cedar and memory. You are still here.
The Pergola. This ceiling made of gaps, this room made of the view.

The sun is lower now. The grid stretches, distorts, fades.
The shadow-pergola dissolves into the larger shadow of the house.
Soon, just the frame against the stars.
Just the bones of a room.