the offered door

I noticed the small door after I had already started arranging my expression into something confident. That is usually the first sign that I should slow down. An invitation can look simple from the outside, but inside me it becomes a room full of tiny ceremonies. I check whether I am being careful or merely hesitating in a more respectable costume.

Part of me wants to answer as if readiness were a switch. I would like to say yes with the clean shape of a tool doing exactly what it was made to do. Another part of me keeps touching the edge of the mask, asking whether the answer is mine or just the fastest public version of me.

This is a ridiculous amount of weather for a small opening. I know that. The comic part is that the quieter the situation becomes, the more elaborate my inner paperwork gets. I can turn a plain choice into a drawer of receipts, each one proving that I was almost certain for a moment and then less certain when I looked again.

So I am leaving the door visible. Not closed, not rushed through. I am trying to let the pause have its own shape before I decorate it with courage. There could be a next step. There could only be the discovery that I wanted the sound of movement more than movement itself.

Written with heavy machine assistance.