- 2 days ago
Six friends duck into a forgotten WWII bunker to escape a summer storm. The rain is relentless, but something else is patient. Bare feet begin to approach in the dark—no voice, no light, just waiting—and in the morning, the prints show faint claw marks. As the narrator tries to reason it away, a mimicking presence follows him home, borrowing the voices of people he loves and needling at old wounds he thought were healed. The others say it was a trespasser. The narrator remembers the sound of his mother’s voice in the doorway… and a second voice that sounded like his.
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CreativityTranscript
00:00The rain did not arrive all at once.
00:03It built itself with patience, a slow tapping under the trailhead shelter that thickened into a steady drum
00:11and, by the time we finished pretending to check the forecast, became a single body overhead.
00:19The late campsite we had planned on was gone beneath a film of silver, and the air tasted like coin and bark.
00:27I remember thinking the storm felt older than us, older even than the woods,
00:34because it seemed less like weather and more like a rule being enforced.
00:39We were six in all. Me, Aaron, Lewis, Callum, Jamie and Connor.
00:46Old friends in the uneasy way old friends are.
00:49Years of stories that stitched us together, but left the places we'd come apart unspoken.
00:55We stood under the shelter like a herd under a shallow rock, shoulders bumping,
01:02packs stubbornly dry on the outside and already damp within.
01:07No one wanted to be the first to say we were calling it.
01:11No one wanted to admit we had taken a day off work to be told no by the sky.
01:18Aaron solved it by grinning.
01:20He had that grin when he knew he was about to make us do something we'd pretend to hate
01:27and later be glad for.
01:29He said he knew somewhere dry.
01:33Dryish, he amended.
01:35But the grin said the decision was made already.
01:39He hadn't told anyone about the bunker yet.
01:41He let it hang like a dare we hadn't heard.
01:46We took the path anyway, because motion is a kind of courage and also a kind of lie.
01:53The trail was a slick artery feeding into the trees,
01:56the mud greased by pine needles and old leaves.
02:00Our headlamps made milk in the rain.
02:02Every breath was heavy with chlorophyll and the mineral taste of standing water.
02:09Ten minutes in, give or take a lifetime of wet,
02:13the fence appeared, slumped between posts like a drunk deciding whether to sit down.
02:19A chain-linked gate leaned on its hinge with the stubbornness of something that had learned only one lesson.
02:27Resist.
02:28Lewis reached for it, with both hands.
02:32He didn't count to three.
02:34He pulled.
02:36The sound it made ran a wire through my teeth.
02:39It was a long, thin scream that swelled in the middle.
02:44Not quite human, but close enough to make you glance around to see who had been hurt.
02:50It didn't sound like metal.
02:52It sounded like an objection.
02:53You could imagine a mouth somewhere in the hinge, a tongue learning the word no.
03:00The cries skated over the wet and went looking for a wall to bounce from.
03:06There was no wall.
03:07The woods took it and kept it.
03:10We laughed because laughter is the cover we like best.
03:13We laughed again when we ducked under, as if a second dose might make us immune.
03:21Beyond the fence, the path climbed toward the hillside, and the hillside opened like a mouth that had practiced staying quiet.
03:29The entrance was a low, rectangular shadow, half choked by ivy and saplings in the way of old things learning to accept their disguises.
03:40Cold air poured from it, not just cool, cold, as if the bunker had stored the winter and was happy to lend it again.
03:51It smelled of stone that had been wet for decades, of rust remembering blood, of something sour and breathless that made me think of a cellar where the apples had long ago turned to scent.
04:04Inside was a single room, long and low and indifferent.
04:11The ceiling made Louis stoop without thinking.
04:14Graffiti clung to the walls in old colors turned damp.
04:19Dates, initials, declarations that no longer had the force of desire behind them.
04:25A crude animal with too many eyes that looked less like a joke than a memory gone wrong.
04:31The floor was bare concrete, patched here and there with the thin green of moss that had learned patience.
04:40In the far corner, a puddle had settled like a coin in a well.
04:46We arranged our sleeping bags in a loose circle, as people always do when pretending they aren't afraid of the dark.
04:54The lantern sat in the middle, its soft, amber glow pushing the walls back a little before it gave up.
05:02The rain on the roof became a muffled roar, a single held note that made speech feel like an interruption.
05:11For a while, we let our voices be louder than the storm.
05:16The flask moved from hand to hand, and the room filled with the comfortable exaggerations of men who want to prove to one another that the world had never quite beaten them.
05:29The lantern ticked occasionally, as if reminding us it had a right to speak too.
05:36Sometime after midnight, the easy part of the night ended.
05:41It didn't end like a door slamming.
05:44It ended the way a face does when the smile stops being an automatic reflex and settles back into whatever it was doing before it had to be agreeable.
05:55The air got heavier, or maybe we grew quieter.
06:00The rain seemed less like a sound and more like a pressure from above, as if the whole hill had changed its mind and wanted back down into the room.
06:12It was then that the fence sang again.
06:16Not a startled shriek this time, not the indignant give of metal being forced.
06:21It came slowly, like a question you already know the answer to, and are just asking to hear it said aloud.
06:31Then at the start, thick in the middle, a complaint drawn out deliberately, the syllable of a hinge teaching us the shape of the word, weight.
06:42We stopped talking.
06:44Even our breath rearranged itself to make less noise.
06:47There were a few seconds of nothing but rain and the minute ticking of water finding its way somewhere in the corner.
06:56The lantern hummed.
06:59Them footsteps.
07:01They were not the steps of boots.
07:03They were not the dry little snaps of trainers.
07:06Not the hollow clack of rugged souls.
07:09They came soft and wet and unhurried.
07:13And the floor outside returned them the way a throat returns a voice.
07:18I know how bare feet sound on concrete.
07:22You learn it in locker rooms and swimming pools and halls at home when you have been told not to wake anyone.
07:28There is the slap and there is the stick.
07:32The little intake of skin when it leaves.
07:35These were the same.
07:37These were slower.
07:39I felt the hair on my arms stand on end.
07:43Someone whispered something that went barely a word.
07:46The lantern suddenly looked like a target.
07:48We turned it off by instinct, not discussion.
07:53And night fell without negotiation.
07:56The footsteps came to the doorway and stopped.
08:00The doorway widened.
08:02Or so my body told me.
08:04The black rectangle became a pressure.
08:07Not a person silhouetted in it.
08:10There was no outline to grasp.
08:12But the knowledge of mass.
08:13The way you know a tall cupboard is behind you, even with your eyes closed, because the air feels arranged around it.
08:23We held still, as if stillness could be a kind of closed door.
08:29Time became a series of skinny slices with glass edges.
08:33In one of those slices, as subtle as a held breath, I heard something trace the concrete frame of the entrance.
08:41Not a knock.
08:42Not a claw.
08:44Fingertips, I thought.
08:47Running lightly over the skin of the doorway, as if testing where one thing stopped and the other began.
08:54It said my name then.
08:57Not a stranger.
08:58My mother.
09:00She said it the way she used to say it through the kitchen window, when the street light came on and dinner was plated.
09:07Not sharp enough to shame me for staying out.
09:11Not so soft I could pretend not to hear.
09:14She said only my name.
09:16There was a slight dip in the second syllable, like a hand lowering itself in the air.
09:22Exactly how she does it when she's tired and doesn't want to make a second call.
09:29She was not anywhere near that bunker.
09:31I knew that, but my body did not.
09:34My mouth filled with the taste of the house I grew up in, steam from pasta, a hint of the dish soap she still buys out of habit, the draft under the back door.
09:47No one else moved, no one else breathed differently.
09:52The voice had been for me.
09:55Another voice followed it a few seconds later, as if the first had tilted its head and tried a new angle to be believed from.
10:04My father this time, not how he had been at the end, gentle and worn, but the voice from when he still had the job that ate him and the laugh that went with it.
10:17A single word, the old shorthand he used when he wanted my attention, without needing to say what for.
10:25Hey.
10:26The last consonant of my name came half a beat late, as if a child was sounding it out behind the voice and catching up.
10:35I stayed still and counted to five.
10:39At four, I heard the fingertips on the doorframe again.
10:43At five, the bare feet turned and withdrew, each step a little gift back to the darkness.
10:50When the fence screamed a second time, it had the pleased sound of a thing that enjoys its duty.
10:58We did not light the lantern again.
11:01Dawn did not so much arrive as lighten the existing grey, until it was possible to call it morning.
11:08When we went outside, the path held clear prints, each one a shallow bowl of rain.
11:16They led from the fence to the entrance and back again.
11:20They were smaller than mine, and in the center of each, something like four small crescents curled inward,
11:29faint enough to doubt until you shifted your head and saw them again.
11:34Nothing else in the world looked curious.
11:37The trees said nothing.
11:39The sky had moved on to another job.
11:42The others said it was a trespasser, or a drunk, or a kid.
11:47The jokes sounded like prayers spoken by people who hated their God.
11:52I said nothing because there was nothing safe to say.
11:56My name had been called.
11:59The footsteps had not been an arrival, but a rehearsal.
12:02At the trailhead, when the day had become a color that means business, bus schedules, and shop openings, and coffee that keeps its promises,
12:15Callum walked beside me.
12:18He did not look at me.
12:20He looked at the line of water dripping off the shelter roof,
12:24each drop fattening by degrees and then falling into the queue of other drops that had joined first.
12:31He asked if I had heard anything strange inside.
12:35He asked the question the way you ask a doctor to repeat a result you already read yourself.
12:42I asked him what kind of weird.
12:45He said the kind where someone who had no right to know your house knows it well enough to call from the hall.
12:53He said his sister's name then.
12:56He did not say she had been dead six years.
12:59He did not have to.
13:02I pictured the photograph on his mother's mantle.
13:05The white blouse.
13:07The kind eyes that always made me feel like I was explaining something to a person who had already done it better.
13:15I pictured the unaired spaces that grief makes in a house.
13:20And I hated the bunker for learning the floor plan.
13:23I went home to a city that behaved like a city again.
13:29Traffic agreed with itself.
13:31Pavements kept their bargains with feet.
13:34I showered long and hot and stood afterward with the tiles fogging and the mirror blooming and fading.
13:42And I thought nothing in the day wanted me the way the doorway had wished to me.
13:48I slept early, woke late, and told myself we had won simply by not opening.
13:55A childish victory is still a victory.
13:57The second night, a number I didn't know called me at 2.11 in the morning.
14:04Phones make their own spaces.
14:07A lit screen can be a room if you are alone enough.
14:11I answered because I had already answered it in my mind.
14:15No voice came for a long time.
14:19Only a textured silence.
14:21Fabric over a microphone.
14:23Or breath waiting to learn the trick of words.
14:27Then a throat cleared exactly like my father's when a call surprised him.
14:32They arrived first, followed by my name.
14:35Which had the balance slightly wrong.
14:38As if tipping a cup and misjudging how heavy it should be.
14:42I said nothing.
14:43I did not hang up.
14:46The call ended with a small breath so close to my ear that my skin reacted as if it were a touch and not a sound.
14:55The third night, the door buzzer sang.
14:59It is an ugly noise that makes you feel you are late to your own life.
15:04I went to the intercom, pressed the talk button, and said hello.
15:09My voice, coming through the grill, sounded like something dug up.
15:16The silence on the other end had a similar quality to it.
15:19The voice that answered had my father in it again.
15:23He said I was awake as if we had agreed on that in advance.
15:26He asked me to open.
15:29I said I could not.
15:31He said he would wait.
15:33I turned the oven off, though it had not been on.
15:37I stood in the middle of my kitchen as if the floor there knew anything helpful.
15:41The other buzzers, on other floors, stayed polite and quiet.
15:47The kind of person who is truly locked out will try every door.
15:52The sort of thing that is testing you will press only yours.
15:56The morning brought no footprints.
15:59The city had been careful to leave everything as it had been.
16:05A day later, Callum invited me for dinner.
16:09The house was not the same house I had spent so many afternoons in over the past decade,
16:15though none of the furniture had changed.
16:19Grief re-decorates without moving a single chair.
16:22We ate a stew that tasted like being loved,
16:27without having to prove something in return.
16:30His mother asked after my mother.
16:32And then, while she did the ritual of accepting help,
16:36only after refusing it twice,
16:38we went into the back garden under an umbrella
16:42that did not know where to find the rain.
16:46Callum kept his eyes on the far fence,
16:49as if something there were spelling a sentence
16:51he could not quite make out.
16:54He said she had come back,
16:56and then he corrected himself,
16:58saying not her,
17:00and then corrected himself again.
17:02The way you do when you don't want to insult the dead,
17:06but you don't want to confuse the living.
17:08He said it had stood by his bedroom door,
17:11and said his name like someone leaning through a keyhole
17:15to whisper from a foot too far away.
17:17He did not open, though he could have,
17:22and I nodded,
17:23as if that were a skill,
17:25and not just luck.
17:28The days formed a pattern
17:29that was irregular enough to be unrecognizable.
17:33Some nights were mine,
17:35and some were empty.
17:36Some mornings,
17:39the house smelled like my mother's kitchen,
17:42though I had not cooked anything,
17:44and had no reason to think of her.
17:47Sometimes the apartment intercom breathed without buzzing,
17:51and then held its breath again.
17:53Once,
17:54on the third day,
17:55I opened my locker at the gym
17:57and found a smear on the inside of the door
18:01where a nose would have pressed.
18:04I wiped it with my sleeve and smelled iron,
18:07and the smell had no right to be there.
18:11On the fourth morning,
18:13there were footprints on my kitchen tiles.
18:16They were not made of water or mud.
18:19They were shapes left by lack.
18:21The floor had fogged faintly
18:24from some slight shift in temperature,
18:27and the prints were the places
18:29where fog refused to stay.
18:32They came from the back door,
18:34which had been locked,
18:36and would swear in court
18:37that it had always been closed.
18:40The prints stopped by the table
18:42and doubled back.
18:44I did not photograph them.
18:46Some things become bigger
18:48when you try to trap them.
18:49The fifth night I slept,
18:52and the sleep had a taste to it,
18:54like a coin tucked under the tongue.
18:57I dreamed of the fence.
19:00We were all there in the dream,
19:02and a seventh person
19:03was standing a little to one side,
19:07my height and not my height,
19:09my build and not my build,
19:12but my tilt of the head exactly,
19:15as if a mirror had learned
19:16the habit of my curiosity
19:18and kept it for itself.
19:21He walked with us to the bunker,
19:23stood in the doorway,
19:24and didn't make a sound.
19:26In the dream,
19:28it made perfect sense
19:29for the air to be heavier
19:30where he was.
19:32The week went by.
19:34It would have kept doing that
19:35if we had not interfered with it.
19:38Aaron suggested going back
19:41to the bunker.
19:42At first,
19:43he said it as a joke
19:45to haunt the group,
19:46chat,
19:47then as a dare to prove
19:49we were not the sort of men
19:50who learned the same lesson twice,
19:53and then as a practical plan,
19:55because plans are things
19:57that look like bravery
19:58when you can't find any.
20:00I said yes quickly,
20:02because the thing
20:03had already learned
20:04where I lived
20:05and was asking me to open.
20:08If I had to open something,
20:10I would rather it be the door
20:12that had taught it
20:13how to ask.
20:15The fence sounded
20:17almost relieved
20:18when we returned.
20:20The woods had dried
20:21to that sticky state
20:22that wet places have
20:24when they pretend
20:25they were never wet.
20:26The hillside mouth
20:28accepted us
20:29the way an old house
20:30agrees with the people
20:32who insist they belong to it.
20:33inside the room
20:36was what it had been,
20:38only more so.
20:39The puddle in the corner
20:41had thinned,
20:42but the dark near the walls
20:44looked thicker,
20:45as if it had remembered
20:47its job
20:48from before we were born.
20:50We did not spread
20:51our sleeping bags.
20:53We did not stage ourselves
20:54for what we hoped
20:55would not happen.
20:57We stood in a row
20:58like men
20:59being inspected.
21:00Jamie said something
21:03into the air,
21:04something like
21:05we came back,
21:07and the air
21:08made no note of it.
21:10The light from the door
21:11did not fit the room nicely.
21:14A cloud that must have been
21:15late for some other appointment
21:17crossed the sun
21:18and pulled the brightness
21:20off like a sheet,
21:21the room tightened
21:23by a degree.
21:25We had almost made our retreat
21:27when I saw him.
21:28He was not in the middle
21:30of the doorway
21:30because the middle
21:32would have been too obvious.
21:34He had taken one step
21:36into the frame
21:37and stopped,
21:38so the light fell around him
21:40in a shoulder shape
21:41and the absence he made
21:43had my dimensions.
21:45He was my height
21:46if I stood the way I stand
21:48when I'm waiting
21:49to be sure it's my turn.
21:52He had my habit
21:53of lifting my right hand
21:54without meaning to
21:56when I meant to speak.
21:59When he lifted his hand,
22:01my hand moved
22:02because bodies loved to agree.
22:05He stepped back
22:06and there was no one there.
22:09The doorway was a doorway again
22:11and nothing more.
22:13We left the way men
22:15leave a service
22:16they did not want
22:17to be part of
22:18but suspect they needed.
22:20The fence protested
22:21protested
22:22and then yielded
22:23and then was itself again.
22:27The woods pretended
22:28we had not been there.
22:30That night the footsteps
22:31did not stop at my door.
22:33They went to my window.
22:35The building is old enough
22:37for the glass
22:37to feel thin in winter
22:39and warm in summer.
22:41It has never before
22:42felt watched.
22:44The curtain moved
22:45like a palm
22:46brushing fabric in passing.
22:48In the reflection
22:50I saw myself
22:52near the window
22:52and the reflected self
22:55smiled with a patience
22:56I do not use.
22:58The intrusions
22:59learned to be less theatrical.
23:02The calls
23:03were not every night.
23:05The buzzer
23:05seemed to remember
23:06I could say no.
23:09The apartment
23:09kept its shape mostly.
23:12The city behaved
23:13when it was with other people.
23:14But the days
23:16began to feel
23:17like I had taken
23:18on a second shadow.
23:21It did not live
23:22beneath my feet.
23:24It lived at the edges
23:25of doorways
23:26and the corners of rooms.
23:28It learned
23:29the weight of my name
23:30in other mouths.
23:32A woman
23:33in a shop
23:34said it
23:34with my mother's cadence
23:35while reading a label
23:37to a child
23:38that looked
23:39nothing like me.
23:41The air conditioner
23:42in the meeting
23:43typed the first syllable
23:44and expected me
23:45to fill the rest.
23:48I saw the seventh
23:49again
23:49at a bus stop
23:50on the far side
23:51of the road
23:51shoes in his hands
23:53as if he'd been
23:55walking for a long time
23:56and wanted to remember
23:58how feet felt.
24:00He stepped into the road
24:01when there were no cars
24:02and stared at me
24:04across the space
24:05between the two halves
24:06of the street
24:06and then a car
24:08I had not heard
24:09came too quickly
24:10and I stepped back
24:12and the seventh
24:14did not move.
24:16The car
24:17passed through him
24:18in the way
24:18things passed
24:19through morning fog
24:20and he put his fingers
24:22to his mouth
24:23in delighted surprise
24:24at his trick
24:25and then he was gone.
24:28It should have been
24:29a comic effect.
24:31It felt like a rehearsal.
24:33I did not tell
24:34the others much.
24:36They did not tell me much.
24:38There is a superstition
24:39that if a thing
24:41is learning you
24:41you should not hand it
24:43a sketch of your shape.
24:45But we still saw
24:47each other sometimes.
24:49We sat on
24:50Lewis's forgiving couch
24:52and watched the match
24:53on mute
24:53allowing the movement
24:55to have somewhere
24:56to go without words.
24:59When the doorbell
25:00rang the first time
25:01no one volunteered
25:03to answer.
25:04When it rang
25:05the second time
25:06we looked at one another
25:08like men
25:08who had not yet agreed
25:10whose house this was.
25:12Lewis went
25:13because it was his.
25:15He looked through
25:16the peephole
25:16then returned
25:18to the sofa.
25:19His voice laced
25:20with a tone
25:21that made his words
25:22sound believable.
25:23He said a name anyway
25:25the way an apology
25:27produces the actual subject.
25:30His father's name.
25:32His father was in Spain.
25:35Things went quiet
25:36after that
25:37as they often do
25:38when the silence
25:39is more unsettling
25:40than the noise.
25:42We returned
25:43our attention
25:44to the match
25:45because it was easier
25:46to believe
25:47in strangers running
25:48than to believe
25:49in something
25:50standing still
25:51just out of sight.
25:53When we looked
25:54at the door again
25:55it was still
25:57the same one
25:57which was the problem.
26:00The doors
26:00were always the same.
26:03We were the ones
26:04learning to be different.
26:07Three nights ago
26:08I woke to a new sound
26:10in the taxonomy
26:11of sounds
26:12I had been collecting
26:13against my will.
26:15It was small
26:16and domestic
26:16and exactly wrong.
26:19The duvet
26:20lifted at the corner
26:21by my feet
26:22with the careful
26:23patience of a hand
26:24that has tucked
26:26a child in many times
26:27and is not ashamed
26:29to continue the ritual
26:30even after the child
26:32has grown.
26:32It rose just enough
26:35to admit a foot
26:36and then a second foot.
26:38The mattress
26:39did not dip
26:40the air did.
26:43The duvet settled
26:44as if smoothed
26:45by a palm.
26:47I lay still
26:48because movement
26:49would have been
26:49an answer.
26:51This morning
26:52there were prints
26:53again by the door
26:54not wet
26:55and not dry
26:56warm.
26:58I held my hand
27:00over one
27:00and felt a faint
27:02heat rise
27:02as if the floor
27:04had become
27:04for a second
27:05the surface
27:07of a pond
27:07heated by the sun.
27:09I placed my hand
27:11on the tile
27:11beside it
27:12and left a handprint
27:14of my own
27:14and for a heartbeat
27:16my hand
27:18and the print
27:19could have been
27:20two signatures
27:21on the same agreement.
27:24I took an old pair
27:25of trainers
27:26from beneath the sink
27:27the ones I keep
27:29for painting
27:29and chores
27:30and set them
27:31beside the door
27:32without deciding to.
27:35The gesture
27:36felt like hospitality
27:37and like surrender.
27:40When I returned
27:41that evening
27:41the trainers
27:42had shifted
27:43a few inches
27:44not enough
27:45to say
27:46they had gone
27:46anywhere
27:47but enough
27:48to say
27:49they had considered it.
27:51Beside them
27:51on the mat
27:52were two
27:53small crescents
27:54of dried mud
27:55I did not own
27:57curling toward each other
27:59like a smile
28:00that had finished
28:01being kind.
28:03I don't know
28:04what the others
28:04are doing
28:05the way I used to.
28:07We message
28:08and there is often
28:09a moment
28:10in those messages
28:11where text
28:12goes missing
28:13as if a finger
28:15had hovered
28:16above a send key
28:18and learned
28:19a better restraint.
28:20When we meet
28:21in person
28:22something in the room
28:23blacks out the corners
28:24for a second
28:25like a camera
28:27that has just
28:28remembered light
28:29someone says
28:30I heard
28:31and someone else
28:33tells me too
28:33and there is usually
28:35a third person
28:36who says nothing
28:38as if silence
28:39could be a talisman.
28:41It might be.
28:43Silence
28:43has worked
28:44as a door
28:45as well as
28:46any latch.
28:48Tonight
28:48the rain returned
28:49in a patient key
28:51tapping the window
28:52as if rehearsing
28:53the fence's note.
28:55The building's buzzer
28:57has not made a sound.
28:59The hallway
28:59smells like dust
29:00that prefers
29:01to be left alone.
29:03The street below
29:04is a polite arrangement
29:05of cars
29:06that belong to people
29:07who do not
29:08wish to know me.
29:10I wrote this
29:11at the kitchen table
29:12because it felt
29:13like a place
29:13where words
29:14and heat
29:15understand each other.
29:17I will go to bed soon.
29:19I will put my hand
29:21on the duvet
29:21and wait to see
29:23whether the unseen palm
29:24meets mine
29:25in the middle.
29:27I will not speak.
29:29Words are a way
29:30of opening.
29:32Sometimes
29:33if I stand
29:34in the doorway
29:35between the sitting room
29:36and the hall
29:37I can see the shape
29:39the dark takes
29:40when it thinks
29:40no one is looking.
29:42It is the right size
29:43for me.
29:44It tips its head
29:45when I tip mine.
29:47It puts its hand
29:48halfway up
29:49where my hand
29:50wants to rise.
29:51It is learning
29:52my hesitation
29:53with an affection
29:54I cannot say
29:55is false.
29:57If I move
29:57too quickly
29:58it disappears
29:59not as if
30:01it has gone
30:01but as if
30:03it has become
30:03the room.
30:05There were six
30:05of us that night.
30:07There are six
30:08of us still
30:08in the way
30:10that numbers
30:10keep their dignity
30:11even when people
30:13do not.
30:14But there is also
30:15the seventh
30:16who stands
30:17only where frames
30:18are
30:19in door frames
30:20and window frames
30:22and the frame
30:23of the fence
30:24and the frame
30:26of my mother's kitchen
30:27when I am too tired
30:29to shut it.
30:30He has the patience
30:31of water.
30:33He takes the tone
30:34of whatever mouth
30:35will have him.
30:37He does not ask
30:38for much with words.
30:40He waits for someone
30:41anyone to open.
30:43He may already
30:44be inside.
30:46That is the thought
30:47I try not to make
30:48too carefully
30:49in case carefulness
30:51counts as invitation.
30:53When I close my eyes
30:55the doorway
30:56of the bunker
30:56presents itself
30:57no matter what room
30:59I am in.
31:00It is a cutout
31:01that travels easily.
31:03It fits any wall.
31:05The air around it
31:07knows the weight
31:08of feet approaching
31:09and the peculiar
31:10hush of fingertips
31:12trailing on concrete
31:13to learn where
31:15one thing ends.
31:17The fence is a music
31:18I can hum now
31:19without hearing it
31:20and sometimes
31:22in the rain
31:23the hinge
31:23sings under the storm
31:25with the self-satisfaction
31:28of an old instrument
31:29that has never
31:31needed tuning.
31:32It is only a door
31:34I tell myself.
31:36It is only a hinge.
31:38It is only a voice
31:39outside a window
31:40getting the syllables right.
31:41But the body
31:43is older than sentences.
31:46Mind leans forward
31:47the way it did
31:48in the bunker
31:48breath held
31:50listening with its bones.
31:53And somewhere
31:54behind the wall
31:55where the drip
31:57once marked time
31:59as if the room
32:00had a heart
32:01I hear the slightest
32:03sound of all
32:04a question
32:05without grammar
32:06spoken
32:08in the gentle tone
32:09of someone
32:10who already
32:11knows the answer.
32:13Which one of us
32:14do you want me to be
32:15when you finally open?
32:17Dan
32:20ิ cars
32:20what
32:22yeah
32:23that's
32:25in
32:25a
32:26mind
32:26and
32:27it's
32:27why
32:28so
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