“Stand Porter At the Door of Thought”, she says (a repair)

They told me to stand guard. They meant well. 

They meant: you are powerful, what you hold in your mind is what becomes real.

They didn't mean to make me afraid. 

But I became afraid.

I stood at the door of my own thought 

for years 

checking credentials, 

turning away anything that arrived 

unannounced —

grief, showing up in the wrong shoes. 

Rage, which they said wasn't real. 

The body, which kept insisting it had something to say.

Not today, I said. I don't know you.

But here is what I have only just learned, 

standing in a château in France 

with cobblestones under my feet 

and a wall full of keys 

to doors I'll never know —

a porter is not a guard.

Porter: a person employed to carry luggage and other loads — especially in threshold spaces. The railway station. The airport. The hotel. The places between where you were and where you're going.

A porter doesn't check 

whether the bag deserves to be carried. 

A porter doesn't ask 

if you packed too much, 

if you should have left some of this at home, 

if you really needed to bring all of that.

A porter just says: I've got that. Let me take it from here.

She was trying to say: be discerning. She was trying to say: you have agency over what takes up residence in you.

She forgot to mention that some things need to come in and fall apart on the floor before you understand what they were trying to tell you.

I am learning to be 

a different kind of porter now.

Not the one at the gate with a list. 

The one in the lobby with a lamp —

come in, come in, yes even you, confusion, yes even you, 

old grief in the wrong shoes, yes even you, rage I was told wasn't real —

I see you. 

I'll take your coat.

You must have been so cold 

waiting outside all these years 

while I pretended you weren't there.

What do you need?

I've got that. Let me take it from here.

That's the question she never got to ask. 

That's the weight she never got to set down. 

That's the sentence I'm finishing —

in a threshold space, 

between where I was 

and where I'm going,

finally, 

finally, 

learning how to carry 

and how to let go 

at the same time.