The Handle I Carry

I carry a handle.
Strange, I know.

Most people choose a door and learn its creaks.
I stay a little longer, listening down the hall, counting echoes until the air itself decides.

So I carry a handle—not because I cannot enter, but because every door might become home.

I have stood before many doors.
None of them called my name.
Yet.

None of them turned me away.
They simply stood there, keeping their own quiet, holding their space, as though they already knew that I was the one who would hesitate.

I stand in a hallway, dim, but warm.
My palm closes around the handle.
I try it on every door.

Each click sounds certain.
My feet don't.

I walk deeper into the hallway of maybes.

Every few steps, another door awaits.
Some polished by certainty. Some faded by time.

Most become another door.
A few become another question.

Those... I cannot walk past.

I linger where one doorway breathes a little longer.
One hand on the handle, one eye still on the hallway.

I borrow what I can from the room beyond,
while unopened doors keep tugging at my name.

The hallway grew quieter.
My footsteps learned the language of waiting.

Doors no longer asked me to enter.
They only reminded me that wonder is sometimes enough to keep walking.

Behind one door, a deck of cards still carries the tricks my hands never finished.

Behind another, languages still wait for me, some like old friends, others like names I never learned to answer to.

Behind a third, conversations linger, waiting for the version of me who stayed long enough to finish them.

And in my hand, the handle, belonging to none of them.

Some doors opened to roads instead of rooms.
I rode toward the horizon.

It never came closer.
It simply kept me company.

One road climbed quietly to an old observatory, where the sky met me halfway.

I left each room carrying less certainty than I entered with.

My pockets filled with unfinished songs, borrowed words, constellations, and roads that still call my name.

None of them were enough to keep me.
All of them changed the way I walked the hallway.

I thought I feared choosing the wrong door.

I was wrong.

I feared the silence of every room I would never know.
Every language I would never speak.
Every trick my hands would never finish.
Every road that would forget my footsteps.
Every sky I would never stand beneath.

I wasn't afraid of choosing.

I was afraid of saying goodbye to every life I couldn't live.

I still carry a handle.
Strange, I know.

Not because I cannot enter.
Not because every door might become home.

Every room has already left something in my hands: a trick, a word, a road, a little borrowed light.

The handle feels lighter now.

And if you ever find it resting quietly beside a doorway...

you'll know.