Door 65

Interested in your interpretations.

DOOR 65

            I walk upon a passage in a corridor that leads three ways.  One being deceivingly daunting I pick its path.  In the darkness a single sconce flickers with light.  Not by flame but by a theatrical bulb mocking one.  In front of this faux flame rests what used to be, and very well still could be a mailbox for those who dwell here.  The craftsmanship is mesmerizing, and I find myself gliding my fingertips across the beveled cherry edges.   Every box is perfection, through it is clear they have survived decades of use.  Some of the locks show evidence of time, others appear as if never witnessed a key.  I want to look away from the only mistake on this beautiful structure, but my eye is toyed to Door 65.  Door 65.  How it taunts me.   All other doors remain locked, at attention, pristine.  Door 65 is gone.   Inside show the secrets that lay behind the other locks.  I stick my hand through it.  Feel the place where someone’s mail once took temporary residence.   Maybe a letter from home.  Maybe a letter from war.  The beating history in my hand feels eerie and suddenly I am aware of the echoing of footsteps in the hall.  I pull my hand from the hearth and stare blankly in the dark until the footsteps solidify in the form of a woman.  She is old.  Not like me.   Wearing what appear to be previously nice clothes but are clearly tattered and far past their worth.   I stopped taking shame in staring at people years ago and it seems she did the same.  When she approaches the mailbox her eyes tear from mine so she can place and old brass key into box 82.   “What happened to door 65?”  I say, reaching my fingers back into the box and scratching the grates with my fingernails.  She removes her mail and with a twist of the key the box is locked again.  As if she was never there.    “Hmm”  she looks over,  Her eyes are dark, like the oak of the structure, and her wrinkles stretch downward towards her sagging décolleté.   “It appears it was opened one too many times.”  Her ancient heels send echoes through the darkness until she reaches what I assume is her home.  I imagine her opening the letters with her tissue paper hands and sharpened nails.  The sounds of VCR recordings of game shows from years before fill the silence of her empty home.  She will die soon, then someone else will fill that apartment and box 82.  My hand is still in box 65.   “Opened too many times” she said.  IMPOSSIBLE.   These boxes were made to open, and anyway it doesn’t look like it was torn off or fell off or couldn’t be fixed!!  ‘Why couldn’t whoever tore it off put it back, then the structure could stay perfect and whole.’  “People never put things back where they belong.”  ‘Perhaps’ I think, ‘the culprit was an admirer, like me, and wished to take a piece of this pristine polished masterpiece as a trophy.’  “AH, what a stupid trophy” I recanted.  The trophy is useless if the prize is bruised.   I don’t know why I care so much anyway.  The piece is broken.  That is that.   I rip my hand from the metal and wood and create my own echoes in the darkness.  But the tiny doors call to me.   Each one of them whispers its stories in my ear.   They show me images of love, sorrow, desire, happiness, truth.  And Door 65 shows me nothing.  I block out all their sounds and press my ear to the void, begging for answers.  WHO TOOK THIS DOOR.  Why is it missing.  What once lie behind Door 65.  The lying light flickered, and so I left. Away from the madness of this imperfect structure. Away from the echoes of the past, present, and future.   Uninterested in any of the doors, except the only one that could give me nothing.