Memory Palace

I walk down a hallway that curves slightly, each door identical. I know this place--I visit all the time, alone. I open each door and visit its inhabitants. Today I pause beside each frame and press my ear to the wall...screams, weeping, cackling. And that one, the one that rumbles... I slip quickly past onto the fire escape--the only escape into the real world from this dungeon. All the bustling people everywhere, swarming below like ants. None notice my frail figure--or none care. Whenever I come here, I end up tearing onto the fire escape, overwhelmed, and jumping. I somehow wind up walking among the crowd, which is as unperturbed as the sea when my pebble meets the waves.
I hear a nagging voice in the back of my head--you can't keep those doors closed forever. It is my internal Natasha Bedingfield: Release your inhibitions, she whispers. Let your barriers down... I know she wants me to open the doors, but can I? Without them it's a drowning deluge and with them it's a desert tomb.
The knobs rattle restlessly...

Inspired by Pendergast

For Joanne

The girl in the white dress found the old rickety wooden shack without recognizing it. The sun had bleached the bare planks, and the roof had half-fallen in. The door creaked and stuck, so she braced her shoulder against it, leaning with all she could muster, and fell through the crumbling wood panel onto the cool concrete floor. Her first view was rays of sunlight streaming through the ceiling like bits of revelation on a sunrisen mountain peak. Collecting herself, she stood, first noticing the barren, cracked concrete floor. Then she saw it: upon a simple three-legged stool, encased in a dusty glass sheath. Her almond eyes widened, and her fingers quivered as she lifted the cage and removed the scarlet rose. She knelt, eyes averted, remembering hesitant words painted on that shadowy hotel room ceiling in Germany. She gasped and ran her fingers over the cracks in the floor as if realizing them for the first time. She stood suddenly, spinning about, and noticed that there was one more thing in the room: a postcard, still glossy under all the dust, languishing in the far corner. She stooped to whisper away the film of neglect, and saw through the years a curtain of jade ivy. On the back, a note:

Inextinguishable, like the sea.

V.