HERE AND THERE

This back door is pretty much like that back door though this back door is more of a side door in my head while the other back door while also on the side of the house, the back side, or side back, or back of the side, seemed more of a back door, maybe because there was a very big parking spot out back which gave a real “back” feel to the house and it was generally after parking the car I would come in through the back door while my parking spot here is much smaller and on the side and there is very little back though there is a clothesline which we didn’t have there. When we were opening the back door there and coming home or stepping out and smoking on the steps, coming in trepidation or loneliness or relief, going in woodenness or exhaustion or determination or hanging in sadness trying to build a bulwark against time with cigarette butts and smoke someone else was opening the side door here, snapping it shut again, turning in the little hallway to unlock the kitchen door, and stepping in. We have many more locks here than we had there. And now while I step up to our side door here and pull out my big bunch of keys someone else or two other someone elses step up to the back door there having parked their car or cars, step onto the red-brick patterned linoleum floor of the small kitchen with its window over the porcelain sink and purple-blue door to the laundry room (I painted it) while I unlock and step through two doors and step into our yellow kitchen here to which I have never lifted a paintbrush and probably never will.