Anatomy of Disappearance

[Verse 1] There is a house where my skull should be All black oak, wet stone, old Latin The windows blink when no one looks The doors grow teeth if I ask what happened A bell rings under the floorboards Though no one pulls the rope A little saint with my childhood face Keeps coughing up envelopes Inside each one: a smaller room Inside each room: a stair Inside each stair: a boy-shaped bruise Learning how to disappear [Chorus] Anatomy of disappearance Rib by rib and shelf by shelf I got tired of being haunted So I became the house myself Anatomy of disappearance Page by page, the windows close If I make my name a hallway No one has to call me home [verse 2] The library sleeps with its mouth open Swallowing moths and candle smoke Every book is bound in weather Every prayer has learned to choke There are hymns nailed to the ceiling There are angels in the pipes They sing through their little silver wounds All night, all night, all night I put my heart in a bell jar I put the bell jar in a wall I put the wall behind a portrait I taught the portrait not to fall Then I waited for the wanting To forget which room I chose But longing is a blind librarian It finds the vein and catalogues [Chorus] Anatomy of disappearance Rib by rib and shelf by shelf I got tired of being haunted So I became the house myself Anatomy of disappearance Dust by dust, the throat goes numb Every silence grows a staircase Every staircase eats the sun [verse 3] There’s a lecture hall of mirrors Where the lesson never ends Every version takes attendance Every version fails again One is holding out his hands One is splitting at the seam One is writing I’m still here In the margins of a dream But the ink turns into beetles And the beetles turn to keys And the keys crawl down the drainpipes Singing, “No one leaves, no one leaves” Ivy-eaten boy in the cellar Sweet little rot with a pulse He wears my face like a wet black ribbon He loves me like an open vault He says, “Come down, come down, come down” Where the floorboards flower red “You can sleep inside the plaster You can bloom among the dead” [Chorus] Anatomy of disappearance Rib by rib and shelf by shelf I got tired of being haunted So I became the house myself Anatomy of disappearance Bone by bone, the green gets in I was not lost, I was cultivated By the garden under my skin [Verse 4] The chapel coughs up golden feathers The confessional grows mold Something wearing mercy’s perfume Licks the doorknobs clean of gold I kneel before an empty lectern And the lectern reads my name Backwards, softly, like a curse Like I am someone else’s shame All the saints have hollow fingers All the windows taste of rain I feed myself to old architecture And call the ache by borrowed names If a hand knocks in the distance If a voice leaks through the wall The house tightens all its ivy Till I cannot want at all [Bridge] I do not die. I catalogue. I do not cry. I stain. I do not leave. I lignify. I turn my grief to grain. I am the rot in the rafters I am the hymn with no mouth I am the locked west wing at midnight I am the candle going out I am the child in the archive I am the archive’s appetite I am the ivy’s favorite sermon I am the bone under the ivy’s bite [outro] There is a house where my skull should be There is a chapel under that There is a cellar full of breathing There is a boy becoming black He is not gone, he is furniture He is not dead, he is decor He is the shape beneath the carpet That the guests learn to ignore Ivy-eaten boy, lie quiet Pretty relic, darling shelf When the house has finished dreaming There’ll be nothing left to tell