Only Elsewhere

There was once a road
that nearly learned her name.

She was young enough then
to believe a door opening
meant a house had chosen her,

young enough to carry
her small belongings across a threshold
and mistake invitation
for permanence.

For one season,
she lived inside the almost.

There were rooms
she thought might remember her,

a different landscape
waiting outside the windows.

She had not yet learned
that some doors open
only long enough
to teach us their closing.

Before the season could finish,
the house chose
what it had been before her.

And the road returned her
to the place from which she came.

I will not tell you
that I understood.

Some departures remain
small locked rooms
inside us,

their keys appearing
at strange hours.

I can trace certain questions
backward now,

finding an old thread
and following it farther
than I intended.

The veil thins
where the road divided.

And somewhere beyond it
walks a girl
I almost became.

She stayed.

That is all I know of her.

She grew older beneath
a different sky.

We are strangers,

separated by a door
that closed.

Most days,

I like the woman I became.

Most days,
I am content inside her.

There are others
when sadness arrives
without explaining itself,

and I let it.

There are rooms in me
I have not finished discovering.

Perhaps there always will be.

Some mysteries
have earned
the right to remain unanswered.

Her road went one way.

Mine went another.

Not better.

Not worse.

Only elsewhere.

You cannot live
in two directions at once.

With Grace & Ink,
Mai