Door

As a child, I knew home by the big red door.

There was sometimes a screen, but only in the summer.

Door.

It is the entrance to the home, the mouth of the house, the in-between world, a dimension of sorts, standing in the way between the outside and the inside. To some (the invited), it is a portal, to others (the uninvited) it is a wall. 

It’s semi-permeable.

 (To stop the uninvited from entering the home, a mirror placed opposite the threshold will bounce them back out!)

Sometimes before bed I would race around the house, scared, and lock all the doors. Shut all the windows. Lock them. Such a feeling of security when I twisted that tapered lock that fit perfectly between thumb and forefinger. There are ways for bad things to come into your house, and it is not always through the door.

As a child, my family would be away sometimes for long hours that stretched deep into the night. I took this time as an opportunity and I used to pretend that there was a burglar in my house. I would twist all the creaks and cracks of the house settling into itself into the careful hushed footfalls of a black-clad burglar with a sack for my jewels and a wrench for my head.

Sometimes there’s wolves at the door.

There are black-eyed children who would like to come into your home. It is said that they will knock on your door and you will feel a chill to your core, if you have a dog in this house of yours, it will bark and growl at the door. It is said that the children will knock and whine and ask to pretty please use your phone, and you don’t answer the door because of the fear, and the hairs on the back of your neck, and the goose bumps but you feel a little heartless because now their pleading is more desperate and but for the fear you would fling your door open and now they are angry, and you understand why they are angry, and you peer through your door-hole, and you see them there, with wide open O mouths and tears in their eyes and you notice that their eyes are completely black. Iris, pupil, whites all black! Your fear turns to poison in your stomach turns to snakes all twisting and knotting and coiling.

And you don’t let them through your door.