On doors

I do not go through doors that I do not know well; doors that I have not leaned against, cried against, or even ran my hands up.

The doors at my house are always opening and closing. There are two doors into my sister's room--one from the hall, and another from the bathroom. So if one is blocked, and you're fast, you can get to the other before its locked. Or if you hang out under the door frame with the light off, you can freak someone out. Or if you leave the door open, it'll make the room cold, and you can wake someone up without getting punched in the arm. My house was one of tricks and yelling and laughing. The doors bit; they were in on it, too.

But there are many doors I am not comfortable with. Doors that are not mine. Some that I would like to touch, but can't. Doors that never become mine, because they remain everyone else's, institutional and vague, for the entire quarter (year?). What happens behind these doors is not always mine. But those rooms that have become mine? I am greedy. I am jealous. The space behind these doors will always be mine, and I enter and go as I please to reaffirm this, to keep it mine. Because doors will revert if you leave them. We forget them; they forget us.

I knock quietly on most doors. I have been known to take the longest route to other doors, to put off that dreadful moment. But what of doors left open? This is not an invitation (not always, at least). It is a trap. Trust me--I consult the admiral on this stuff.


And then the door closes behind you. And it becomes an interview for a job you need really fucking bad. Or a cramped up class where nobody gives a rip about anything except collecting the sound of their own voice.

I don't want to do shit like this. Not really. I'd much rather walk out of a class I love, which I've done before, because I know I'll come back; I'll want to come back. When you leave a class you don't like, it feels good for awhile. But then you either have to go back too soon, or not at all--you start skipping. Which fucks up your grade, wouldn't you know it.


All my doors can be reopened by me; which isn't to say they will lead me to the same room.
All my doors, my contexts, my rooms, will die with me.

But I take things from these rooms; I am a thief. I am a horder. I am a lover of things through other things. I run with my arms full of temporal things from temporal places. Wine and two words that got through a language barrier--that's what I got away with last night. When I get home, I spill my pockets and push them into safe places--paper, mostly. They do not last long outside of their places. The things I draw and am reluctant to show people, these are the things that I have stolen from temporal places. They are rarely beautiful, rarely colored, and almost never finished. And that's alright. I'm not making art. I'm making breadcrumbs.

nom nom nom.