I
Beyond the Unknown Door
The first step will hurt. The first step will reopen the wound. Sometimes, it healed not back into color. When monochrome fills the skies, there comes the symptom of wanderlust to keep a person living. When those colors return, reality will sparkle.
When the turn comes for someone like Liam, whose heart repeats disorganized rhythms, there the wound is recognized.
Here, he faces a reflection. He notices his eyes. He sees the furthest dark, apart from something wished to be sincere. In one glance, there had been tears and the droplets have soaked into his lap. He wiped the remnants away. The second time he stared into the mirror before him, it had been the same, though without the tears.
Now upon the third glance, the third turn and attempt, his findings are rawer. His face, less covered. His hands are now at his side, while he takes the first step.
He takes it, finds darkness, and then begins falling. Although, all Liam needed to do was stand up, again. He is seeing into his mind, remembering either a dream or a former life, though the pain in reopening the wound is great. It stings. Convulsions from this torment seem endless, until he begins to blame the walls and his fists. He raises his hands to begin hurling them against those exteriors.
Further pain is inflicted upon every strike.
Liam is gone. Not from the pain, though by where it has welcomed him.
Liam had fallen and is upon the rug seeing more surfaces to shatter. Though, he’ll harm himself, in endless turns. He’ll wish the wound to close, again, just as his eyes do to find sleep.
He stands, again, exiting his room and discovering a hallway he had always seen, though now appears new. Walking now down this corridor, pretending it holds no familiar pictures on the embracing walls; and with imagination to stake his home down, this hallway appears dark. No light and no familiarity are there, as symbols for consolation. When this path stretches, there are moments that appear to Liam like hours, with those same hours soon seeming like years. When it all ends, he is welcomed to another exterior. Although, it is a door. Is it an escape?
“This is no escape,” whispers Liam, to answer the narrative question. “Something else is welcoming me,” he adds, continuing with, “At the same time, something is beyond this door to keep me.”
It is as if this door is another mirror, despite it appearing to Liam so unknown and more unfamiliar than the portraits upon the walls he had passed. He wants to be welcomed, wishes to be embraced more than how those former walls were close. Something to this is a testament to sincerity. To this door, Liam parts his lips to admit the words, “There is no light beyond this. It could another hallway or even another door.”
To know.
To simply be curious over untread ground.
Here, Liam faces what he conceives to be another reflection, in its possibility. One turns of the doorknob could be truth or a deception. Where is he? As we said, a wound must be reopened if it had healed into monochrome. It could have sealed not back into the colors of life.
Here, Liam says aloud, “If only something beyond this door did not also feel like nothing.”
If beyond this door that to his abode, had always existed, there will be something, then it will also be nothing should familiarity be approved. Familiarity with what? Is it an old pain that never wants to heal, only to remain keeping Liam searching for newness? Familiarity into nothingness. Something is always nothing to Liam, as how opening this door could be the same in opening his wounds.
His past is brittle, the same as human flesh. As all human histories, they are as doors. Unknown for what will be seen, when opened, though in knowing that the door had kept its current spot, there is nothing. There is nothing new. Whether in the darkness or beneath the sun, there is nothing new.
If he required sincerity in a reflection, the same as the mirror then to this door, then it could simply be something he has hidden. If a door, then it might be a containment beyond it. A closet.
If Liam could see that mark of sincerity, he might weep or remain without needing to wipe his eyes. The door might even open of its own volition, as it could be ajar. If a newness is what Liam seeks, the best he will find is something concealed. A wound that has closed is one that engrains the dirtiness of the past into it, without the added ingredient of forgiveness.
He opens the door. He reopens the wound. The door was never opened. The wound had once been caused, as open. Liam sees the blend, the black with the white, the monochrome. After this sight, he says aloud, “What was my surname, again?”
Modern Romanticism 