The Hidden Room

[Verse 1]
Our house has a room that isn’t on the plan,
behind the pantry, thin as a folded chair.
I eat cold pie there, standing up,
like the crumbs can keep a secret from the stairs.
You laugh at my receipt for a secondhand coat;
I wore it once to buy oranges and feel new.
The sleeves smell faintly of somebody else’s weather.
I came home with pears for you.

[Pre-Chorus]
I know the trick: a little sugar,
a little door I don’t have to walk through.
It works. That’s the embarrassing part.
For ten minutes, I am pleased with what I do.

[Chorus]
I love this house; I keep measuring the walls.
I want the rooms we never built, the names I didn’t answer.
I’d miss your shoes beside the radiator—
still, some part of me is packing in its sleep.
I’m not asking you to let me go.
I’m not promising I’ll stay the same.

[Verse 2]
At dinner I’m all here, passing you the salt;
then a stranger smiles and my mind rents out a life.
I spend too much on a ticket, cancel it by morning,
kiss your forehead, tuck the receipt beneath the knife.
There’s a joke in how I want to be adored
by everyone, then come home to your old mug.
I love the chip along its rim. I hate that I can
make a whole new world from one bright shrug.

[Outro]
The hidden room has room for us, I think.
Or maybe that’s just where I go to think.