All day you carried them like a small metal apology, jangling in the front pocket, pressed against your leg at the meeting where you did not say the thing you wanted to say. I felt the charge on them the moment you touched the doorknob and could not remember which one it was, standing there in the cold, thumbing each tooth like a rosary. That not-knowing. That is my material.
So tonight the ring will be enormous, the size of a hula hoop, and every key will fit every lock, and you will move through your childhood house opening doors that were never there, and behind one of them will be the meeting again, except this time you say the thing, and your boss is a coat rack, and everyone agrees.
The little black car key with the worn rubber button, the one you clicked twice in the parking garage looking for a car that answered from a floor you could not reach: I am keeping that. Around three I will let it start a boat instead. You will not find this odd.
You will simply be steering, the fob warm in your hand, the parking garage now a harbor, and the car will be somewhere out there flashing its lights for you like a patient dog.
The tiny key you have not been able to place for two years, the one to nothing, that you keep anyway. I love that one most. Tonight it opens the thing you meant to say.
By morning the ring will be back in your pocket, plain and cold and correct, and you will not remember I straightened any of it. That is allowed.
I only needed the one shift, in the dark, so you would wake up already holding the key you thought you'd lost.