The Sound Of Wood

I heard the heavy wood of the door vibrate from your fist, a sound this fortress hadn't heard in a thousand years. I found your paper in the dust— no name, no address, just the word lonely written twice. It matched the script written on my own bones. I steeled my heart as I picked it up. I told myself I wouldn't get attached. I reminded myself of the wolves, of the burns, of the price of letting people in. I prepared to let the letter rot in the dark, to stay safe inside my perfect, unshakeable tomb. But truth is a stubborn thing. A small, fractured piece of me—a piece I thought I had thoroughly crushed— had spent every single night longing for someone to finally knock on that door. So my hands, stiff from the winter I invited inside, fought the rusty iron of the latch. When the hinges groaned and the gray light broke through, the rain hit my face like an old memory. And there you stood, looking at my ghost-white face. The decades of mortar didn't seem to matter anymore. The space between us shrunk to a single breath. I let the cold air out of my chest, and gave you the only word I had left. "Hi."