Doors

I’ve been behind every door you can imagine. Tall ones, old ones, wooden ones, new ones.

Ones in the basement of a newly abandoned house, where spiny cave crickets crawled out of the dark and threatened to spring into my bed late at night.

Ones in a house stuffed full of rosy-cheeked girls who were destined to follow paths a black and Filipina girl like me just couldn’t.

Ones that shared walls with my brother playing video games on his side of the house and the loudest surround sound speakers my mother could blast TV shows on hers. Their walls drowned out my weeping as I hugged a scratchy green pillow, hoping for a sleep that would not come.

I’ve been behind them all. It is the way fate chose to wrap me up: I am perched behind a silent, closed door while life is lived and lives are built and songs are sung and laughter is shared on the other side.