Through a Crack in the Door
Think of those times late at night,
really any time in the long expanse
of life when you are walking down
any empty hallway, alone, but trying
to not draw attention to yourself, as if
you were an interloper progressing
deeper into the heart of a shadow.
Maybe you are six years old and awake
and padding through a sleeping house.
Maybe you are older and lost in
an unfamiliar wing of a glass and
green formica office building, or
maybe this is a dream, a dark corridor
of memory and archetype and symbol.
Note the many doors, some locked,
some dark, some lit from within, all
shadow and yellow glass, some ajar.
Imagine the slivers of otherness,
the temptations of other stories, an echo
of music, a whispered argument,
a red shoe, the click of a typewriter,
some slow flickers, some sudden flashes.
Imagine the absence of invitation
and the guilty refusal to look away.
