The Empty House Paradox

when one door closes, another opens,

describes the same door

& the eyes staring back from the abyss

belongs to a vulture.

you’re no longer outside anymore.

instead, you stay inside a room

where the walls are so big, so black,

they whisper.

desperately, you search for an exit

& a vulture with bloody wings lying dead by the door

frightens you.

long ago, the vulture sought out the sun

as if a key & the entire sky became its home

or the sun was kept hidden,

hurting your eyes from watching it

& the vulture, seeking a home,

mistook the sun as an open door?

nothing is ever the way that it seems.

what appears as a door in front of you

opens into a house or a cage

depending on the placement of the lock

& who holds the key.

all you remember about outside

is the vulture lurking through clouds

for its prey & a voice telling you to peek

through the keyhole, where you see yourself

in an infinite time-loop:

in all the things you failed to let go of

are all the things you lost, discovered.

what remains outside the door?

the sun (whose freedom you envy)

tethered to the sky, reveals to you

even the body itself is a cage.

long ago, the vulture was a key

who cut the sky open to free it

& oceans leaked from the clouds

like scar tissue

or the sky itself was a hand

cupping the sun as if a fragile thing

to protect it from the vulture

lurking beneath it?

somehow, darkness enters your room

beneath the door & sneaks in sunlight.

it sits behind you like your shadow.

loneliness will not leave you alone here.

everything you love about the dark is why

it frightens you: how it exists is an illusion.

with your hands, you make art of it.

your hands, held together, cast a vulture

above the door drenched in shadows,

but when they pull apart, two sunsets

orbit each other. eventually colliding

& you’ll embrace the dark.

grateful that it holds your secret:

you built the door to cover a hole

in the wall like a bandage to a wound.

everything you love about the vulture is why

you carry it: how it lives is by nature.

with the same hands used to build the door;

you give a home to it

where the walls hold in so much space,

it’s suffocating.

your thoughts speak with a voice

unfamiliar to you, as if from a memory,

warns of an ending. to what?

a world you only knew to exist

in a dream? here, you discover, you

have been dying in your own mind.

a cage torments by giving you

the tools to build another cage for yourself.

your eyes are also hands.

what are they holding? everything

you want to forget.

what appears as a shadow around you

is the clouds swallowing the sun

or is darkness itself blooming into a body?

your mind suffers a paradox:

the desire to escape oneself imprisons you.

your hands hold the key because they are.

the door that appears in front of you

stays closed because you closed it.

on both sides of the door is a lock

& your hand holds your other hand like keys.

what remains outside the door are shadows

as light snatches the space from the walls

& you realize your eyes were always open

as if they were doors themselves.

you see yourself glaring back at you

& remember

you had shut the door at the beginning

to escape the sun, not to preserve it.

a mirror reflects when facing an object

is why you regret opening the door.

what appears as yourself in front of you

is a shadow of hands taring apart bird feathers.