The door is already ajar,
as though it changed its mind too late.
Light lies along the floor,
thin as a remembered voice.
This place —
not as it was,
but as it might have settled
if you had been the one who stayed.
Your hand finds the edge,
not to open it,
only to test
how easily it gives.
Inside, a small adjustment —
wood easing,
or the faint continuation
of something lived without you.
It would take so little
to enter.
No locked past,
nothing held against you,
only the soft permission
of an unlived room.
You lean into it —
almost stepping forward,
almost carrying that other life
into yourself.
But the moment closes in,
soundless,
barely a movement at all.
And the door remains
exactly as you leave it:
open enough
to see what you are not.