The Chimney Garden

Lyrics

Up. Past the second floor landing, avoiding the gilt-framed eyes of the Portrait Hall. The air thins and turns to dust. Another flight.
The Attic Landing is a shore of cooler silence. I turn away from the Taxidermy Room, from its patient, glassy stillness. That is not my work. My preservation breathes. Through the Main Attic, past the ghosts of furniture, and here. The small door, no handle, just a notch in the wood. A final climb into the heat.
And the sun is everywhere. Not just from the sky, but from the brick. A dozen small, red suns in a row. Each chimney, a spine of warmth. A library of every fire lit below, now a garden bed above. This is where the house exhales its history.
Terracotta pots, cracked and mended. A trellis of rusted rebar. Here, the flue from the kitchen runs steady and low, good for the basil. And here, the one from the great Study fireplace, where the heat still bites. The mulch is paper from 1923, its headlines illegible, feeding the roots of a tomato planted in 1981. I remember both summers at once.
The sun is everywhere. Not just from the sky, but from the brick. A dozen small, red suns in a row. Each chimney, a spine of warmth. A library of every fire lit below, now a garden bed above. This is where the house exhales its history.
Listen. The soft tick of the cooling flue after sunset is the exact rust-red of the heirloom tomatoes in that pot. A sound I can see. I remember a vine that grew a fruit shaped like a key, or I remember the story of the vine. It doesn't matter. The lock is gone, but the shape remains, a flavor on the tongue.
My hand on the brick. It holds the warmth of a January morning in 1947. A living archive. Something to put up. Something to keep against the cold that is always coming. Always.