We have this little door. In our house, under the stairs. Between the pantry door and the stairspace. A small white door, painted into the wall, made to be hard to see. But I don’t think it wants to be invisible. It’s much too pitiful for that.

Mom has always said it’s the old boiler door, and now the boiler is electric and in the washroom, but I don’t think a boiler is behind it. I’ve wanted to see what’s behind the little white door since I first saw it as a child, when I thought it was just about my size. I thought things that fit ought to go together, or at least it was a feeling. I felt the door almost beckon to me. I don’t think there’s an old boiler behind it. I wouldn’t find much interest in an old boiler.

Mom and dad are out of the house this evening, and little Tom won’t wake soon once he’s put to sleep. When they leave, I’ll open the little white door. I’ll see what it hides behind its little white lines.

They’ve left, and Tom is snoring in our bedroom. I’ve promised to be good, and I will be. I just want to open the little white door.

I tiptoe down the stairs not to wake Tom. I sneak up to the door, and pull its little white knob. It won’t open. The paint has sealed it shut, but paint is brittle and weak. I begin picking at the peelings that have come there on their own. The door is whispering to be opened, but can only do so much in its inanimacy. It pleads to time to help it, and time has made the paint brittle and weak.

I peel away a thin line around the door’s outline. It’s disruptive and upsetting, and I think Mom will be angry, but twisting the knob turns the door open. I can pry it ajar, and let the darkness spill out. I can turn it open completely, and look within. But it’s hard for anything to be seen, as the first of what the door hid was an old darkness.

But something from behind it all glimmers dimly, and I think I can make out a shape. A silhouette almost, wearing a thin halo of wiry white light capturing a deeper darkness. The darkness makes the shape of a boy, sitting on the floor behind the little white door.

I cannot see his face, or his hands, or his skin, but he is a young boy, and I take him for a peer. Quietly, his head moves slightly to the side. It’s not a word, but I want to come in with him, and sit with him on the ground. I can still fit through the door, though I’m not so little anymore. It feels much brighter when I’m inside the darkness, and my home’s hallway seems so dim. The darkness flows far and wide, and if it’s a room, it’s a big room, bigger than one I’ve ever been in. I find the spot next to the boy to sit on, and I sit down.

The thin white wire twists down, looking between the shape that means the boy’s legs. I look with it. The boy is holding something in his amorphous hand. He’s prancing about with it like a little toy horse. It prances in my direction, and I follow its tracks. It prances over to my leg, where another little dark horse is found. I think the boy wants to play with me. I think I want to play with him too. I pick up the little dark horse, and we play around.

I think the little white door shuts when I touch the horse, but I can’t see. I’m looking at my friend, and I hop my horse over to his, and he pretends to run his away. I think there is some shouting outside, but only for a moment, when there comes the crying, and then just silence. I feel crumbling far away, beyond the darkness, and then that stops too.

And then come the stars. Brilliant speckles of white light scatter our dark little world. We play among the constellations and the planets, and we hop about as the planets fall apart, and each little light dies away, one by one. It’s only a moment, and we’re back in the darkness, and it’s only a moment, and everything is quiet.

It’s just us, in this big darkness. It feels like we’ve been playing forever. It feels like we’ve been here for all of time.

8.X.22