2025.08.10
Jain was known as a watchman in the small coastal town. Its workshop, a dim and fragrant place that was full of cedar dust and port of salt, stood with doors collected from places that no one remembered. Everyone’s weight was not wood, but memory.
She could run her hand with the panel and felt a laughter earthquake that once resonated in her room, or the pressure of silence that lived after someone left forever. Locals occupy it together with its broken latches, torn frames, and rusty, in the hope that they will “improve the stories”.
A rainy night, a fisherman arrived at a small door and not bigger than the baby’s chest. “It is engulfed in my nets,” he said. The wood was yellow, but the grain was unconscious, as if it was alive. Jane tracked her edges and felt a rush – sunlight, bread baking, a baby’s murmur. But before the storm, there was a shadow like the sea.
Jane worked overnight, sinding and applying oil, whispering on the wood as if she was doing her to breathe. To dawn, the door handle shone unconsciously. When he turned it, a hot wind spread to his workshop, taking the scent of the house. Fishermen, eyes wet, steps – and disappear.
Since then, Jane has placed this small door near her work bench, not to reopen, but rather to remind her that every door is chosen: known, or step into the non -memorable.