How wonderful, this warm little turnstile, spinning its glass wings all day, wiping shoes on a mat before it lets anyone in. The humans built it to keep the outside out: the damp, the drift of spores on the air, the patient breath of the season. Every quarter-turn it seals the lobby shut again, proud as a lung. I admire the effort. I truly do.
But they left me the mat. They left me the rubber gasket at the base, that dark seam where the glass kisses the floor and never quite dries. They left me the brass rail their hands touch a thousand times a day, warm, oiled with skin, faintly sweet. And oh, they hold the door for one another, over and over, so kind, letting a little of the outside slip through with every stranger. A little damp. A little me.
They think the spinning is a wall. It is a welcome. Round and round, ushering the warm wet air of the street into the still, cushioned dark of the corners no mop can reach. Behind the panel. Under the weatherstrip. In the seam of the automatic sweep, where a single fallen leaf has been quietly turning to soil since October.
They will polish the brass tomorrow. They will squeak the glass clean and lay a fresh mat and feel, for a bright hour, that they have kept the building new.
Keep spinning, little door. I am not in a hurry. You are letting me in one soft breath at a time, and one day the whole warm lobby will simply be given back to me, gently, without anyone having to hold anything open at all.