She lets it ring twice before she goes, and both times my whole self leans toward the door with her, wanting to be the one who answers.
She wipes her hands on the dish towel. She checks her reflection in the dark window over the sink, tucks one piece of hair, decides it doesn't matter. She is annoyed. I can tell by the set of her shoulders, the little exhale, the way she calls "coming, coming" to no one, as though the box on the wall could be reasoned with.
She has forgotten it is a marvel. She has forgotten that somewhere out in the cold, someone stood on the step and pressed a button because they wanted to be let into where she is. That is the whole miracle of it. Somebody came.
I remember answering. The knob cold and round in the hand, the give of it, the rush of outside air and porch light, a face turning up to meet yours. I remember being the person on both sides of a door, the leaving and the arriving, the being expected.
She opens it. It is only a parcel on the mat, no one there at all, and she sighs at the wasted trip and stoops to gather it up. She does not know that the stooping is the gift. The cold on her bare arms, the crickets, the neighbor's television murmuring two houses down, the weight of a small box against her chest as she carries it back in.
Ring your bells, all of you. Answer every one. Go to the door even when it is nobody, even when it is nothing, even when it is only the wind leaning on the button.
Someone would give anything to walk down that hall again.