An Ouroboros of Doors

The first door opens easily.

That should probably make you suspicious.

Beyond it is a hallway washed in violet light. At the far end, another door stands open just enough to suggest that something has been waiting for you. You walk toward it. The floor tilts so slowly you only notice when the light begins pooling against the wall.

You step through.

Another hallway. Another door.

This one has the handle from your childhood bedroom. The next has the weight of a church door. One opens before you touch it. Another requires a key you find already warm in your pocket.

Each threshold feels like a decision. Surely all this opening must be taking you somewhere.

Then you notice the scratch beside the hinge.

You have seen it before.

You turn around, but the doorway behind you has become the doorway ahead. Farther down the passage, a figure reaches for a handle. You raise your hand. So does the figure.

There is no far end.

The hallway curves back into its own mouth.

An ouroboros of doors.

The old image is a serpent swallowing its tail. Here, the teeth are hinges. The body is a passage lined with opportunities, and every opportunity opens into the next. You could spend a lifetime moving through it and have plenty of evidence that you had been busy.

Different rooms. Different weather through the windows. A new name on the little brass plate.

And still that scratch beside the hinge.

It is possible to change everything you can point to and keep arranging your life around the same fear. To leave one room because you cannot bear being misunderstood, then build the next room without a single window. To call every departure courage because staying would require a conversation you have rehearsed for years and never had.

The doors make it easy to keep moving.

They do not ask what you are carrying.

Eventually, you sit down.

Nothing spectacular happens. The violet light keeps humming. Somewhere, a latch clicks. For a while, the urge to get up is almost unbearable. There must be a better door. There must be one you missed.

But sitting here, you begin to notice the room itself.

Dust along the baseboard. A cup gone cold. A chair facing away from the window.

Small things. Things within reach.

You turn the chair around.

Outside, the sky is doing something no hallway could have prepared you for. Evening is moving across it, slowly and without asking to be understood. You watch until the light changes.

When you finally stand, the doors are still there.

You choose one. Put your hand on the handle. Feel the familiar impulse to make a promise about who you will become on the other side.

This time, you let the promise pass.

You open the door and carry the cold cup through.

Someone ought to wash it.