Passageway
“The brain has corridors”
—Emily Dickinson
She moved from street to street, from building to building, from floor to floor. She had done this for more years than she cared to count. In fact, she had grown tired of counting: one year became five became fifteen and twenty as fast as fists could unfold. The passage of time exhausted her, felt like running in place, eyes blinking, clouds covering the sun.
And so it was that she walked into old public building and saw a sign that said “passageway” with an arrow pointing to the right. At this stage in her countless life, she thought, one direction was as good as the next. So she turned to the right. Her shoes echoed down the yellowed linoleum of the corridor. She ended up in a room full of wooden marionettes: a dancer, a cabaret singer, a minister, a beggar—even a ghost.
And without warning, the lights dimmed. A curtain closed on the box that held the marionettes. She sat down on a stool and waited, her hands on her thighs, her eyes on the box. And finally, the curtain opened, the stage-lights flickered, and the marionettes performed.
A funny show.
She laughed at how the minister tried to close down the cabaret by day but frequented it by night (in disguise, of course), how the dancer tempted him, and how the cabaret singer saw through his disguise, and how the beggar sat outside and put on a show of his own.
It was all what you would expect.
Until the ghost appeared.
That ghost changed the feeling of the whole show, terrified her, in fact. And when the curtain came down, her hands lifted from her thighs and moved into a clap.
As if there were strings attached. As if there always had been.
(photo by Rita Kniess-Barkey)
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