Traditionally, they’ve been overlooked by the myth makers. Too liminal, as the academics say. This is most likely false: there is almost certainly a god—or at least a goddess—of doors. She is minor arcana, she is second thought not best thought. She does not sit on a cloud. She shudders often and sighs frequently. She is at the mercy of hands. She loathes an open-floor plan. I exalt her. She gives me a room of my own. But, sadly, she is not represented in the theoretical texts. In those, it’s all about window-worship: the glory and wonder of how glass is spun from sand, the clean sharp sunlight let in to show us where we live. I offer thanks every time I clasp a doorknob in my palm. It moves against my skin and unseen levers and locks shimmy and click. A theory of doors would be a theory of lines drawn not in sand, not scratched in glass, but constructed in space, built across three dimensions. Windows will get you nowhere. Marvel the threshold, marvel the hinge.
—————
Kristen Holt-Browning's chapbook, The Only Animal Awake in the House, was the runner-up in Moonstone Press's 2021 Annual Chapbook Contest. Her poems have appeared in Frontier Poetry, Hunger Mountain Review, Juxtaprose, and several other literary journals. She earned an MA in English from University College London and lives in Beacon, New York, where she works as a freelance copy editor. Follow her on Instagram (@theholtbrowning) or find her online at www.kristenholt-browning.com.