Content note Mentions war and displacement (non-graphic).
It hangs on a red thread around my neck,
heavier than iron has any right to be.
The door it belongs to may not exist.
The neighbours’ photographs say rubble.
I have not looked at the photographs closely.
But the key does not know this.
Every night it opens the door anyway.
Here is the hallway, cool tiles, my father’s shoes.
Here is the kitchen, the window over the sink
where the lemon tree pressed its face to the glass.
Here is the room I shared with my sister,
two beds, one wardrobe, a crack in the wall
shaped like a bird we named and fed with stories.
Here is the roof where we slept in summer,
counting planes back when planes were only planes.
In this new city my door has a code, not a key.
Four numbers I forget when I am tired.
The landlord is kind. The walls are thin.
The neighbour’s radio sings in a language I am learning.
My daughter was born here. She asks what the key is for.
I tell her it is for a door.
She asks which door.
I tell her: the one inside me
that I keep locked so I can keep living,
and unlock so I can remember who we are.
One day I will give her the red thread.
She will not know the hallway or the lemon tree.
But her neck will learn the weight,
and the weight is the house,
and the house is still standing there.
