Hello prickly part of me.
Welcome to my heart.
Look. In a moment
of bravery, I took down
all the exit signs.
Turns out they were
a pretense, anyway. Sure,
there are still doors,
but what I’ve found—
all doors revolve bringing
all parts of me right back
to right here.
Posts Tagged ‘door’
Welcome
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged door, parts of self, prickly, returning on September 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Doors Where I Have Knocked
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, door, loss, opportunity on February 6, 2025| 2 Comments »
Door of forgiveness that’s never locked.
Door of dreams. Door of god.
Door of contentment without a knob
that can only be entered with empty hands.
Door of tenderness that opens with breath.
Thick door of safety. Wide door of rest.
Windowless door to the future. Hingeless
door of hope. Door of patience. Door of no.
Door that requires I take off my name
before it will let me in. Door of prayer.
Trapdoor of sin. Door of courage.
Door of less. Door where the password
is always love. Trick door that appears
when I’m too weak to move. Door of
the heart where someone knocks back,
where I listen as if I might understand.
But it was the unwanted door of loss—the door
where I didn’t chose to knock, forged
from despair and gnarled wood—
that was the door that changed me for good.
After the Long Silence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dante, door, harmony, music, silence on March 11, 2024| 14 Comments »
harmony opens in me
the doors of forgiveness,
just a sliver—
then it dissolves
the idea of a door
The Mother Stands in the Doorway
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, death, door, doorway, grief, loss, mother, silence, son on November 28, 2022| 12 Comments »
Because you are gone,
I will never again stand
in your doorway and listen
to the sound of your breath
as you sleep.
I can remember the way
it used to calm me—
the slow, even rhythm
that proved you were alive.
I used to laugh at myself.
As if you wouldn’t be alive.
How farfetched it felt,
the idea of your death.
Now, I hear the absence
of your breath everywhere—
everywhere is a doorway
where I find you are not.
And so I listen.
Sometimes it seems as if a silence
is breathing me,
and somehow, you live in that silence.
I don’t know how it works.
I only know that since you are gone,
sometimes listening feels like communion.
Sometimes when I am very quiet,
when there is no sound at all,
I hear you say nothing.
It’s everything.
On a Day When I Am Determined to Get Things Done
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged door, friendship, serious, stress on August 5, 2022| 12 Comments »
for Augusta
There is not a shade of judgment in her voice
when my friend says to me, “You feel serious.”
Serious, I know, is a kind way to say,
There is joy all around you that you aren’t seeing.
Serious is her way of saying, Sweetheart,
I can tell you are locked into stress.
How strange and beautiful to have her name
the seriousness, and that’s all it takes
to feel my thoughts ease, to remember hands,
remember breath, remember lips.
There are, of course, good reasons today
to be serious. And there is also a tea party
with a seven-year-old girl. And yellow snapdragons
in ecstatic bloom. And a juvenile grosbeak
at the feeder. And daisies gracing the river bank.
There’s goat cheese and sauvignon blanc.
There’s waking to the purr of the cat.
Oh the gift of spaciousness. How it leaves me
astonished at life—so able to see there is more.
So simple, sometimes, when a friend
shows you a door in the day you never
could see on your own. So generous,
how she doesn’t try to offer you the key.
She just trusts you to walk up to that door,
perhaps push, perhaps see what happens next.
Excuse
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged door, excuse, other, welcome on July 13, 2022| 17 Comments »
after Naomi Shihab Nye, “Red Brocade”
I would like to think if you arrived at my door,
I would invite you in. I would ask you to sit
on the light green couch and sit down beside you.
I hope I would offer you tea with milk or honey,
let you choose which mug you like best.
I hope I would not answer the phone,
would not worry about the work not being done,
would not think of the list as it lengthened.
I hope I could sit with you and listen.
Could look you in the eye. Could notice
how the position of my body
naturally mirrors the position of yours.
But I notice how defensive I am of my time.
See how I label it mine?
Every day, I feel somehow behind.
Every night, I lament I did not find more hours
hidden inside the clock.
Is it possible meeting you is the most important item
on my list of things to do?
What would it look like if you knocked tomorrow
when I know I already have every minute planned?
Would I say, I’m sorry you’ve come such a long way.
I have too much to do today?
Or would I find any closed inner doors
and fling them wide?
Could I find the words I hope I could say:
Come in. Welcome.
Here, which mug would you like?
Thank You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged door, gratitude, opening on August 7, 2021| 3 Comments »
It’s not as if the door can decide:
Open. Closed. Locked. Unhinged.
The door is ever at the mercy
of the hand on the knob,
the shoulder that smashes it,
the wind that abruptly slams it shut,
the smile that swings it wide as noon.
Long ago, I learned every moment
has a door, and that those doors
never open themselves. That is why,
standing here, I am astonished
to see, through no effort of my own,
a door swing open. And how sweet
the surprise when I see
on the other side of the knob,
your hand.
Ode to Opening the Door
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged door, opening, practice on March 9, 2021| 5 Comments »
Every day, many times,
I push down the lever
that opens the door
from the room to the house,
from the house to the world.
Such a simple gesture,
grasping, then pushing,
then letting go.
Sometimes quickly,
as when I am trying
to keep the cat inside.
Sometimes slowly,
as when I am trying
to quietly enter
a room where someone else
is sleeping.
To open a door
is to move from one space
to another, perhaps a space
where dark rye bread is baking
filling the room with its midnight scent,
perhaps a space where a single
bare lightbulb is swinging,
perhaps a space filled with birdsong
or gunfire or stars or a final breath.
My whole life
I’ve been practicing
how to enter a space—
how to meet what is there
on the other side
and still be true to myself.
My whole life I’ve been opening doors,
some I immediately regretted,
though there is no going back.
The room I left is never the same
when I return,
nor am I the same.
My whole life
I’ve been opening inner doors,
always surprised to find
another, always surprised
how big the worlds are
in a space the size of me.
Every door I open
I practice how it is
to move through,
to move into,
to offer my attention
to what is new,
perhaps a gust of wind,
a lullaby being sung,
a spacious grief or an expansive trust
I never dreamt was there.
One Arriving
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged arriving, door, hope on October 5, 2020| Leave a Comment »