A Small Country of Doors

There is a country made mostly of doors.

No walls.
No addresses.
Only hinges in the grass,
knobs silvered by weather,
thresholds learning the names
of everyone who left.

I arrive carrying nothing
but the key I could not use.

The first door opens onto a kitchen
where my mother is younger than me.
The second opens onto rain.
The third refuses the hand
and keeps its blue paint shut.

Far off, the sea keeps moving
like a thought that will not sign its name.

Children run between the frames,
vanishing at the hinge,
returning with pockets full of salt.
They ask which house is mine.

I point to the one without a house.

At dusk, every doorway gathers light.
The field becomes a map
of almosts:
the call made,
the room spared,
the body turning back
before it learned to disappear.

I choose the smallest door.

Inside, a chair.
A window.
One clean cup on the sill.

Nothing opens after that.

Still, the sea keeps its distance.
Still, the grass bends towards me.
Still, the key in my pocket
has begun to feel like a key.