The Door in the Wall Should Remain Closed, by Ileana Marin

A story inspired by Liliana Sâmbotin's Gate of Blossoms

A door is an invitation, which is precisely why I hesitate before one—open or closed. I’m reluctant to accept invitations addressed only to me. The fear of what I cannot see, do not know, or never expect—or, to put it in positive terms, the difficulty of what is hard to see, hard to know, and wholly unexpected—began in a Romanian school during communism. There I learned that what looked like an opportunity was usually a trap. You know the expression “too good to be true”? That was it. Everything was too good (rhetorically) to be true (ontologically). I carried that paranoia across the Atlantic.

So whenever I face a door, I wait. I let someone else go in or out, then study their features, their clothes—though I know the proverb about clothes revealing nothing—and even the spring in their walk. Most of the time, I decide to stay on my side. No risk of betrayal is a risk well taken: no risk, no betrayal; no risk, no challenge; no risk… who cares.

But this door is different. It’s guarded by a crawling ivy of violet glass shards. The blue door itself is fragile, breakable, whispering a different kind of invitation: break me. Be the villain for once. I feel stronger than whatever lies behind a glass door. The glass ivy is spreading fast; soon it will cover the whole wall. I will be the only one who knows that there was ever a door in the wall. I will walk alone down the street, pass the hidden entrance, and feel confident that I made the right choice:
I did not open the door; I did not need to! What I should do now is mark
Liliana’s glass door with graffiti and finish Magritte’s Unexpected Answer with a shard from hers.

Rene Magritte’s Unexpected Answer, 1933