Rules for Playing the Doors Game

 

Rules for Playing the Doors Game

Stand here.
The first door is directly in front of you.
When the signal comes, open that door.
Mother, you cry,
to a room full of love or animosity.
Enter.

I can't predict what you will see.
Perhaps a fragrant garden, glistening after rain,
perhaps a row of beehives, fat workers,
strange birds twittering and hopping, unable to fly,
a dragonfly, a dragon.
Perhaps a ghetto, sleek rats,
shrewder than you will ever be.
Perhaps a row of barracks, thin workers,
tattooed arms, hunger.
Different eyes see different things.
I can only tell you the rules.

The first rule is this:
You can never turn and go back.
The only direction is forward.

Each room you enter has doors.
Some are blind doors, leading nowhere.
Some are locked doors which you will not be able to open.
Some are jib doors, hard to find.
All close behind you when you step over the threshold.

Some doors go to rooms you will never have to enter.
How lucky you are.
A cage of circumstance called Srebrenica
holds 8,372 gaunt men and boys within a barbed wire fence.
That distant forest over there is called Katyn.
A different door is waiting for you.
Find it.
Open it.
Enter the next room.

Now I will tell you the second rule.
You can never reenter a room you have left.
That is the second rule.
In front of you now is another row of doors,
but fewer.
In each successive room,
there will be fewer doors to choose from.
Take your time.
Take it.
Choose a door.
Open it.
Pass through it to the next room.

Some doors open of themselves.
Avoid those rooms if you can.
They are called Gaza, My Lai, Auschwitz,
Darfur, El Mozote, Rwanda.
They are called Mariupol, El Estadio Nacional,
Supernova Sukkot Gathering.
They are called Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo,
Guantanamo Bay detention camp, Alligator Alcatraz, black site.
They are called massacre, genocide, shithole countries.
The people inside those rooms are called Rohingya,
Jews, Palestinians, gooks, illegal enemy combatants,
orphans, monkeys, vermin.
Some call them abuela, papa, abna' al'amm, dearest,
some call them dead.

Some rooms are small as a bullet casing.
Some rooms are large as a sea where ships sail and leaking rafts bob.
In some rooms you will be alone.
Abandoned.
In some rooms you will only think you are alone.
In some rooms you will hear sirens, gibberish, discord.
In some rooms you will hear a berceuse.
Mama, screams the young warrior, mortally wounded.
Different ears hear different things.

Take your time.
I will soon tell you the third rule.
Some rooms are full of clocks and calendars
Some are full of almanacs, celestial trajectories,
vestiges of night dreams and talking points.
It does not matter if you like a room or not.
The third rule is this:
You will not, cannot, stay there.
Not ever.
Never.

Another room.
Another door.
Another room.
Another door.
Another room.
Another door.

The fourth rule is Move along.
Gather your pitiful possessions and move along
Take your tear-drenched love letters, your ephemeral emails,
your lottery tickets and little white lies.
Take the red leaves of autumns past, years brittle and torn.
Take your pratfalls and promotions,
military ribbons, crumpled beer cans, blood-stained aprons.
your antiquated plastic phones still full of words.
Move along now.

The fifth rule is a quandary.
It is about something called free will. Or predestination.
Or, sometimes, the human condition.
Or, sometimes: the Chosen, the Elect, the Select,
God's own little army, God's little acre, killing fields,
locked in a trunk, a cell, a gas chamber, a torture chamber.
The fifth rule is: The destination will be one and the same.
Many ask why, but that is the fifth rule.

Do you want to know the sixth rule?
This is where it gets tricky.
This is where you find out if you won.
Or if you lost.
You took your time.
You took it.

Until.
The sixth rule is until.
You will never know you are opening the last door
until after it opens.
You will never know it is the last door
until you step through it.
You will never know the rooms
were your allotted time
until you have passed through them.
You will never know it wasn't a game
until it's over.