Step into a rickety walkup, countless staircases ahead and the promise of other dimensions hiding behind the door at their end. She shows me the kitchen, the unending supply of freshly brewed coffee, the creaking wood floors, while I glimpse at the closed door and wonder what lies inside.
When at last she guides you to your cubicle, a cocoon punctured only by one skylight hinting at fire escapes and sunshine beyond, you feel a gratitude settle along your spine, a quiet humming like electrical lines spreading across your skin, an itch in your fingertips that has been sorely missing.
We have been away for so long, have been absent from our own lives and suffering without remembering since the heavy blanket was draped across our town all those years ago. I have been half a life, half alive, I have been a weighted shadow, I have seen a face in the mirror but it has not been my own. Tears appear in my eyes that only make me smile.
I have made it out of the valley of death again,
somehow, impossibly,
and it feels as if
the taste of life has never been
sweeter than
this.
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