TEN YEARS FROM NOW YOU WILL KNOCK ON MY DOOR

Essay Prompt: Imagine your life in 10 years…

One day you will walk up to my door, and knock on it. The air will smell like conceived rainstorms, and you will be driving the Discovery Tracker you’ve always wanted. When you pull into my driveway the gravel road will cackle under your wheels and somewhere in the spine of your mind, you will remember the way I used to laugh.

You will walk up to my door, and notice the peeling teal paint, wonder if I’m alive. You know I am though. You heard my voice on NPR last week reading poetry. You saw my photographs, but when you knock on my door, you will still wonder if I am alive.

I’ll be inside, looking out the windows you used to sketch for me. The water will be a color that makes me want to sing. I’ll be inside drying dishes, and listening to the same song over and over again, something I hadn’t done since high school. I’ll be finding solace in the same rhythm over and over again, solace in the same lyrics over and over again.

“Hello,” you will knock on my door. You would stare at the grass I haven’t mowed, it doesn’t look like the manicured yards we were used to driving by on the Peninsula on our way to your house after school. It looks like the small cracks in the sidewalk where only the strongest weeds survive, something about it untamed, free. You’ll remember the days I would only whisper “be like the grass.”

You will knock on my door again, teal paint chips will fall to my porch. You will stare in through the windows and see my studio. The tall hot pink bookcases, and you will see desk where I’ve written my last two of my novels, both of which made the New York Times Best Seller List.

You will knock on my door again. Urgent this time, like there was a fire outside and the only safe place was my home behind the windows.

“Yes, yes, yes!” I’ll shout. “I’m coming!” I’ll walk down the hall with a vase in my hand and a drying rag in the other. My black lab pup bounding at my heels, a soft bark rising from his throat.

You won’t knock again, and you won’t respond either. You’ll ignore the sidelight windows asking you to peer inside my life again, you’ll wonder what else I have hiding in pink bookshelves, but you will step away from the door.

“Wayne!” I’ll look down at my pup. “Wayne, shh. Quit barking!”

You will look at your truck and wonder if you should get in it and drive as far away as you can. But you cannot move. You’ll just watch me open the door.

You’ll say something like, “hey, I don’t know if you remember me—”

“—Oh damn, catch that dog. Wayne! Get back here this instant!” I’ll set the vase and rag on the porch rail, and run off after him. You’ll bend down and scoop my squirming pup in your hands. I’ll pick the vase back up off the railing.

“Thank you! Thank you! That damn dog could run forever!”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know if you remember me, you’ll say again.” You’ll follow me back up the steps onto my porch, Wayne licking your face, fidgeting in your hands. You will ask yourself again why you are here and what you thought this would do.

“Of course, I remember you.” And that’s when you’ll realize I’m drying the vase you gave me ten years ago.