Kaleidoscope | Poetry to Prose Contest

Kaleidoscope

The door has been following me all my life.

I see it wherever I go. There, painted into the scenery onstage at our school's play. There, oaken and dark and nearly blending into the tree I'm climbing. There, hiding inside the forgotten closet in the basement. There, in my room, while I sit at my desk, as I stare at it and it stares at me, calling me, inviting me.

Two things about the door have never changed. The handle with its evergreen hue, and where it leads me. Or rather, who it leads me to.

I first opened the door when I was six. I could feel it watching me from my hiding spot underneath our dining table. I had hidden because no one was looking. The door led me to a world of cotton-candy clouds of pink and purple and gold in bright blue skies. I thought it all a magical adventure. I danced on the soft grass and leapt across the gurgling creek, and it was there that I met her.

She was my age, and she tilted her head at me from across the valley. We did not have to speak to become friends. That was the way it is when you are young. We played together for what seemed like hours. We played as lovely princesses and fearsome ogres, valiant pirates sailing the seas, aliens from outer space. When I sensed it was time to go, I saw the door again, reflection flickering in the water, handle green as it ever was. I went through without question. I did not ask her name.

When I opened the door again I was ten and thought myself very old and wise. The door had ignored me for awhile after her, and I had written it off a dream. Everyone I told about said it had merely been a dream. I had convinced myself I did not see the door, but eventually, curiosity led me to turn the handle once again.

This time it led me into a forest, and she waited for me on the treetops. I chased her across them, leaping and swinging from branch to branch, questions spilling from my lips. I asked where we were, where the door had come from, who she was. I did not ask her name.

Eventually, breathless, we fell down together in a clearing. She rolled toward me and smiled, and the questions fell from my mind, meaningless as they were. I saw the door tangled in the hanging vines and I went through, head turned, trying to catch another glimpse of her.

When I next opened the door I was thirteen, flush with the new changes in my body and the way that people spoke to me. We sat together under a window that looked out over gray-green sea and shared secrets and laughter for timeless hours. I did not ask her name or tell her mine, but we learned every other thing there was to know about each other. 

I went through the door many times more after that, but when I was fifteen, I kissed her. I had kissed a boy before and it had not felt right. This felt right. We sat on a mountaintop, legs dangling, watching the sun go down in a symphony of pinks and reds and oranges. I turned my head toward her and saw the colors reflected in her eyes, and I kissed her. I did not ask her name.

When I was seventeen men and boys began to look at me in ways that made me feel like a cut of meat. I dragged a razor up and down my skin and dusted my face in makeup and frowned at myself in the mirror. I saw the door reflected there, but I did not go through. I had been told by then that I could not have her or anyone else who used "her." I spent a year without her and I felt a steady ache that did not ease with time.

When I step through the door again at last I am nineteen and tired of pretending. Tired of smiling when I do not want to smile. I do not know what I want anymore, only that it is not this. I am tired of not knowing. The door and I have not acknowledged each other in a long time, but when I see it again, the handle is still green as the pine tree it hides beneath, and I do not hesitate when I reach for the handle.

For the first time it leads me to a world filled with other people. I hear distant music and feel all around me the pressure of life. There is dancing and red lights that dangle from strings. A dress brushes against my legs as I take a step through the crowd. And then another. And another.

I see a dress with threads of gold and I follow it and her as it threads through the crowd. I think I hear her laughter. I think I smell her scent. I think and think and cannot see. The colors swirl around me, an orchestra. A kaleidoscope. Just like the clouds the day we met. Just like her eyes the day we kissed.

My head turns and I see her there, illuminated in glow of lantern lights. I have changed. She has changed. But we are still the same.

I reach for her at the same moment she reaches for me. We collide in a brush of soft tulle and cold hands. She spins around me, her dress flaring. My eyes fill up with tears. I kiss her there, under the lantern-light, and I do not ask her name. 

I think she lives in my world, somewhere far across the seas. I think the door follows her too. I think she needed me just as much as I needed her. Maybe I'll see her again. Maybe I won't. It doesn't matter anymore. I remember who I want to be. I remember who I used to be. I remember that my life is my own, and I remember that I matter most to me.

I have not seen the door since then. I like to think it has found two other lives to haunt. To echo through. 

I like to think I am not the only one.