Today, I dreamed.
For those three stolen hours, I dreamed that I needed to find the room with the girls that didn’t know I was coming. I called it “the room of surprises,” in my head, and I smiled. Surprises, like unannounced knocks on odd-numbered doors, should be pleasing — that’s what I was depending on. I forgot that behind the door can be a stranger, wondering why you came to visit when you so very clearly are not wanted.
I went back to the green walls and there was a man in my old room. He clearly owned it, covered it with himself as none of us could do before. I wanted to yell at him about the initials in the closet, the tape under the light, and the streak of blue just above the sink. He glared at me, telling me that I was very clearly not wanted there.
Then I thought “I’ll surprise some old friends! They do live next door.”
So I knocked, holding my surprise in my hands like leftover flour, waiting for something to rise, something to happen. The door opened, and the shock beat out the surprise, the blank beat out the greeting, the eyes beat out the smile. For the second before my feet moved, I knew I was very clearly not wanted there.
But the room — the room I needed to get to! It was upstairs, it faced a city out of place and out of water. Much like the people who live there, I suppose. But as I went to knock, the door opened, and someone walked out. And she kept going.
And, not for the first time, I realized that though I had come a very long way, with surprise clenching my fingers together and my mouth too sticky to talk, I was still very clearly not wanted there.
