leigh ann

i didn’t know it was an odd feature at the time but when I was young my bedroom had a door that connected it to my parent’s. wooden and thin it was nothing of substance but it only took one brass doorknob with a lock to keep a four year old girl out. it was open a lot more than it was locked.

my room wasn’t a comforting place. gray concrete floors and even grayer concrete walls. with no ceiling, when I woke up with a start from nightmares on my back on that single mattress on the floor, the only option was to stare up at the blackness of the rafters and imagine the monsters of my dreams crouched in waiting, clinging to the roof just out of sight.

that’s all it took for me to jump out of bed and scramble to that door, hands dragging along the gritty wall to guide me. the smoothness of the that door the oasis in the dark desert of my bedroom. it was always good, when the door was unlocked, because then I wouldn’t have to brave the darkness of the hallway, the long stretched out before me. sometimes I’d run past the door and crash into the tiles, the tiles we were always going to create a floor with, and crack more than a few.

my nightmares as a child often had me running into my parents bedroom to cower in fear. i remember some of them, i forgot more than i remember, but i remember the fear. waking up in panic unsure where the dream ended and reality began. children have hella imagination and zero life experiences.

my parents eventually walled up that doorway, and then it was me versus that hallway for the rest of my childhood and i missed it lol.