In the Unused Room, A Spirit Came

The sitting room was sealed in quiet grace—
A shrine of plastic, glossy, airless chill;
The doilies kept their lace as if in place
By vows his grandmother had willed to will.

He knew the dream; he knew the dream knew him—
A lucid film whose colours outshone day;
Each edge was truer than the waking rim,
Each breath more lived than breath could be awake.

The furniture—encased, immaculate—
Made hushes with the softest vinyl creak;
Dust motes like parish candles hung and ate
The sliver of a sunbeam, thin and meek.

His grandchildren ran laughing through the ban,
Bare heels on braided rugs, a bell of glee;
Forbidden room? Not now. Where childhood can,
It breaks old glass and enters tenderly.

Their laughter stitched a hem around the scene—
A mercy-song he’d never heard before;
It made the plastic shimmer into green,
As if the hush could grow a garden floor.

Across the room his sister sat at rest—
Upright, composed, hands folded in her lap;
As if a craftsman carved her from her best,
Then paused before the final, living snap.

Her face was blank, the way a mask is kind
Before the actor breathes a soul within;
No coffin-sleep—no pose to mimic blind—
But watchful, limned by light both pure and thin.

He thought of vigil kept with plumes and dyes,
A knees-drawn cloak, a garland’s fragrant crown;
Not lying like a field where daylight dies—
But seated, ranged between the sky and ground.

Beside him sat his father, stern and still;
A thundercloud turned statue by a spell.
He dared not look too long—he felt the chill
Of judgments that no son can bear to tell.

He held the sorrow tight but let it breathe,
A bird that pecks the palm yet will not flee;
He watched the sliver widen, light unsheathe
Its blade of gold to free what ought be free.

Then—soft as breath that makes a flame lean bright—
His sister stood, and stood as if to float;
A tender, starry halo caught the light,
A wearing of the dawn around her throat.

She smiled—no earthly smile had taught that curve,
No festival of June could frame that cheer;
It seemed a depthless gladness made to serve
The poor in spirit, showing him here.

No word she spoke; yet meaning moved like rain,
A language of the face that washed him clean:
“Why sorrow, little brother, in your pain—
When mercy’s shore is closer than you’ve seen?”

He felt the decades fall like winter wheat,
The quarrel’s barbs unhooked from living flesh;
Regret, that stubborn hound, lay at his feet,
And stilled at last, as mercy’s flail at thresh.

The beam of sunlight widened, grew, and grew,
A river through the rafters, white and wide;
He should have blinked, and shielded both his eyes—
Yet looked, unscorched, as if by grace supplied.

Her brightness walked—no footfall, only glide—
A hush that gentled clocks and calmed the pane;
Then drifting like a breath just loosed aside,
She thinned to silver mist, and then to plain.

The room remained; the children’s game ran on;
The plastic’s faint complaints were almost song;
But he—unchained—felt every fetter gone,
As though a wound was found healed all along.

“Did you,” he turned to say, “just see that fire?—
Your daughter lives!”—and sought his father’s gaze.
But there the iron mouth, the old, hard wire;
The posture locked; the storm without its rays.

What kingdom keeps such statues in its keep?
What doors await a man who would not bend?
He could not name it—would not dare to speak—
But sent a prayer where living flesh can’t fend.

For if there’s dusk for souls that lose their track,
There may be ladders set in shadow’s wall;
A purging heat that burns the winter back,
Till winter leaves and spring receives it all.

He woke with peace that tasted like first bread,
The kind you break on feasts for borrowed saints;
And knew her joy had crowned his heavy head
With something more than rumours, less than paints.

All Hallows near—bright company of light;
All Souls to come—the pleading of the clay;
To one he sings: his sister robed in white;
For one he kneels: his father, far away.

O plastic room, O moated parlour air,
O beam that grew beyond the window’s rule—
What made you temple, sacrament, and prayer?
What turned a grieving man to mercy’s school?

Was it a dream, no more? Then tell me this:
When stone is moved and hearts begin to rise,
What profit is the chisel’s name we miss,
If still we stand before an emptied prize?

If comfort comes and lifts the iron yoke,
Must truth wear proof we measure, weigh, or test?
Did not the wordless smile her presence spoke
Do more than any argument professed?

And if the beam was only borrowed day,
Why did it whiten guilt until it fled?
If nothing crossed from that more-certain bay,
Why are the smiles remembered, not the dread?

When is a dream more truth than daylight’s claim—
When waking serves the dreamer, not the dream?
What is the candle’s source—its wick or flame—
If light is all we carry from the scene?

Let All Saints answer with their festival;
Let All Souls answer with their patient pleas—
That joy may crown the ones already full,
And hope may harbour those yet far from ease.

So keep, O heart, the room no years could use;
Let laughter thread it with a younger art.
Where light once entered, teach the light to choose
A dwelling in the middle of your heart.

Pray for the stern; rejoice for she who shone;
Do both like hands that meet and interlace.
And if the “how” is night you cannot own—
Then own the “why”: a dawn that is your grace…