The House & the World

In the house there was me, and outside the house there was the world, and every morning I had to choose a door.

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There was once a woman who woke up in the middle of the day instead of at its beginning. The day never waited for her. It was already stirring pots, warming sidewalks, humming its little electric hums. She would open her eyes and find everything in motion. This was simply how things were. Not dramatic. Just how it was.

In those days, she thought often about another woman who once said she would buy flowers herself. The sentence was small, almost forgettable, but something about it held a hinge. A door. A beginning chosen, not granted. The woman in the house thought about that. How most beginnings are not announced, but entered.

There was also a word she carried with her: ablation. To remove by heat. To touch something so closely that what is unnecessary drops away. She did not know whether she was removing what she no longer needed or burning away parts she might miss later. The story never told her which was which. She was left to find out by living.

Inside the house, she imagined gentleness. Warm brown kitchens, familiar objects that knew her hands. The kind of quiet that does not ask for anything. But the house had its own weather. Close air. A heat that made each thought feel thick enough to touch. The house was not refuge. It was where recognition took place.

Outside, the world continued without consultation. Dogs pulled at leashes. Someone stacked oranges in a grocery display. A bus exhaled at the corner. The world did not stop to see who was ready. It simply moved, like water downhill.

The woman stood between these two places: the house where she understood her thinking, and the world where she had to test it. Some days she let the world carry her. Some days she carried herself. Both were allowed.

She did not ask to be spared from choosing. She asked only to know the choosing was hers.

So each morning, she placed her hand on one door or the other. Sometimes she opened both. Sometimes she waited. Sometimes she stepped out before she was sure.

And the day continued, with or without certainty.

Which, as it turned out, was its own kind of peace.

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