We are all ghosts if you pay attention. We are all spirits.

            It’s not a matter of ‘When will I?’ or ‘How could I?’ Those are too many words. They are slightly, yet at the same time (paradoxically), monumental in their disadvantageousness. Superfluous and erroneous wording is the utmost enemy. Not to mention the rhetoric of the aforementioned quoted questions is entirely incorrect. They need all sorts of rearrangement. We’ll get to that. Trust me, I’m familiar. Trust me, I’m aware. I trust you, you already know. There are no traces of strangers here. Not even an outline. That’s one of the many reasons I like you, good friend. That’s one of the many reasons I care.

            Where we go, we choose. We use and abuse and discard other’s views to the point of contempt. It’s a point better slept on to get the full picture. But picture this while you’re still awake: a picturesque view of that which you most long for, that which you wish most to acquire. Feels good, doesn’t it? I bet! Except for accepting the fact you’re exempt from the path of that which you lack and you can’t get it back. As if you ever had it in the first place! The optimist in me hopes you haven’t. Now that’s a facetious facet to fancy, first and foremost.

            For most, I wish the best. But firstly I want you to rest safe and sound without the sound of your safe going off in the night in the dark without sight—nor without sound if your caliber’s large and the criminal looms under the slimmest of moons. You’ve got them and spot them, hopefully I assume. Though I should assure you: Hope’s not my thing. Fate has you in its omniscient hands. Destiny will handle the rest.

            Good luck in this scenario, good friend! Hope, Fate, and Destiny are the names of strippers.

            Assumptions, well… assumptions can be quite assuming, can’t they? They can blow me for less! Less than a matchstick but this isn’t Kansas, I’ve been halfway across half of the atlas and found I’ve traveled the fastest on the thirty-ninth latitudinal axis.

            No, not Nazi Germany! Modern geography! Learn your angles! And your world!

            What’s it all for? What are you all for?

            Can you tell me?

            I hope so! If not, you’ve got work to do. We’ve got work to do. There’s always a reason. There’s always relief—in some sort of whimsical way, shiftable shape, feasible form, or abhorrent abomination. Shh—it’s a secret! I’ll share it with you. Follow me. Goddammit! Quiet down now.

            Quiet… calm… very well. Acquiesce now. Capitulation is key. Good friend, good job. Here we go:

            There is a door.

            It may be close, it may be far. If you’ve made it here then I sense you are nearer than you might fathom you are. I imagine you’re closer than black tongues behind the loose lips of lying lovers. Take a look around. What do you see? Sure—floors, walls, ceilings, objects of unimportance—sure. Fine. I’m used to it. I can relate. But what don’t you see? Air, atoms, sound, and (arguably most importantly) the doorway.

            Allow me.

            No—allow yourself, good friend!

            The door can be gold, it can be black. It can be red or gray or garish in ornamentation. It can be glass, it can be steel. It can be single or double or revolving in orientation. Don’t let me impede on your imaginative processes! It can be whichever or whatever you like! Really, this is the most crucial point of the process. Yet, somehow, some way, even more crucially, the point is: it is there. It exists. All you must do is find it. Taking for granted you haven’t already. (Maybe you have. Maybe it begs to be revisited. Maybe it craves recrudescence. Maybe, just maybe, it wants you back. Maybe you should comply. Maybe you might if your might might allow it. I, for one, believe it mightily.)

            Take it down. Talk it up! Take it however you take it such. I’m with it. I’m for it. Who am I to disagree? Who am I to say? Who am I to think? Thinking is still legal, isn’t it—even if just barely? I thought so. Great. Fantastic. Grandiloquent, if I do say so myself (and I do). Without further ado!

            It’s kind of like geometry. You know that old saying: A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square. Doors hinge upon doorways, not the other way around. There’s always another way around. Let us pass through walls if we have to. What’s important is what’s on the other side. It’s all subjective, really. Could it be—

            The past. A bright day from your childhood, a day so profoundly a part of your being you wouldn’t be who you are today without it. A day you thought would never end. In many ways it never did—it never has. You’re here again, aren’t you, good friend? Never knowing where you are now. Never knowing what you’ll be. Leave that in—

            The future. Promising and prominent. Prosperity parading down the promenade. You must think it to achieve it. That’s how this works. That’s how we work. Make it worth it, not worthless. Detach deterioration from its detrimental threads. Keep your head up don’t wind up—

            Dead. I smoke cigarettes in bed. I haven’t woken up deceased yet—at least, not that I know of. My dreams tell me I’m still alive. My dreams tell me a lot though. The universe isn’t as big as we think. It is much, much larger. It’s vast and vacant and lonely lonely lonely, even with all those stars keeping us company. Because stars are incapable of—

            Love. The perfect human. The ideal mate. Waiting patiently for your dissident ascension to the other side. It’s the first day of spring with the flowers and birds and all that. Bloomage and plumage, as it were. Summer’s verdant warmth eventually falls face first. The flames whither to a whisper before they disappear. Ice for embers. Much to your—

            Horror. Dingy dungeons, a particular filth. Thick slime and lowlifes of the same sort. They sneer from the shadows, making deals with the coroner around the corner, ill-reputed and sick. “Any day now,” they say. “Any day now.” Any day now is right! Any day now you’ll find yourself—

            Outside. There’s a brilliant gleam streaking the sky with soft pastels. Twilight twinkling down the gulf, shimmering shimmering away. You made it here because you said ‘I will’ not ‘When will I?’ You exchanged your ‘How could I?’s for ‘How could I not?’s. You opened that door and took that step.

            When you see the door—whether it’s squeaky or greased, swinging or sliding, infinite or infinitesimal; be it locked or gaping, modern or ancient, inside or out; if it’s under a train or over a trap, barricading a cave or blockading a castle, adorning a theatrefront or the front of your home—I ask that you go through it. Heroically and wholeheartedly.

            I know I will. And if not, well, there’s always the wall.