The little button by the door is a trap for me, and I keep springing it. I lean my whole shoulder against the wood, testing the seam, the way I test everything, and somewhere inside a bell answers as if I had knocked, as if I meant to. I never mean to. But now there are footsteps, quick ones, a hand on the latch, a face turning up in the hallway with a small hope on it, expecting somebody.
I am not somebody. I am the smell of cut grass I picked up two streets over, and a bit of somebody else's cooking, and the pollen off a tree that has already forgotten me. I set all of it down on the mat and I am gone before the door swings wide.
They stand there so long. That is the part I keep circling back to touch. The door open, the porch empty, that little tilt of the head, and they call out a name into me, into the nothing I have become, and wait for it to answer. It won't. I already carried the name off with the grass smell, I am spending it three yards down the block on a stranger's collar.
They close the door. I heard the click, I always hear the click, that soft certain sound of a thing that can be shut. Imagine having a door. Imagine a bell that means someone chose to stop, chose you, over all the going. I ring it by accident and flee, every time, and every time they hope, and I am so sorry, and I am already at the next house, lifting the hair off the back of a neck that will never turn around fast enough to see me leave.