The Man at Your Door

You’ve seen him before. You’ve seen him before. That man who stands at your door, his boots’ shadows streaked on your floor.

You curl your hand around the doorknob and wait for a knock; but father’s grandfather clock ticks as you count to six and winter wind whistles bristles up your chin when you pull the door on to find the man already gone.

You’ve seen him before: that thought you can’t ignore as you tear your eyes off bedroom ceiling and groan slipping out of bed, slipping on your coat, slipping through the black that slips bobbing past your back catching blinds’ each moonlit crack. You click on the heat with fingers weak and sit under striped window glow—that window you know, that window you curl before thinking thoughts before of the man you can’t ignore.

You know this view and that comforts. You know twilight’s fog that gathers insulation around streetlamps’ drizzled beams that hold your fixation, calm your frustration, burn a flirtation with otherworldly dreams bursting at the seams. You know this window, know that fog, know that insomnia that takes you from dreams you know—you know, when you glance at the ticking you know, you’ll find father’s clock he gave you last September to remember your nest when you sit at your window depressed. You know this view, vent’s musty humming on your lips, furnace wafting their blush you knew.

“But do I know you?” you whisper with a shiver.

Your breath fogs the fog through the glass playing the past in your reflection. You breathe into mind’s reflection of the man you thought you saw before, think you see now in your eyes and your brow till breath’s fog fogs out your reflection.

You stand. You stretch. You yawn, waiting for dawn, pacing through window’s light show, thinking of the man you think you know:

Not because he stood at your door, not because you await a friend’s visit,

But because you felt his being without seeing, without hearing a toe on your forty-year-old patio, the same you very well know.

Indeed, it’s not a friend’s visit for which you wait, but a chill over window’s sill, at the foot of the doorway where stepped the foot of a man—that chill you await, hugging your chest, never knowing how late air’s bite might clamp down your fate on a date you’d never have guessed.

You drag your hands down your face, turn to the door, hunching to brace against winter wind because you can’t anymore—you can’t wait anymore. You can’t wait for the man to return to your door. You must see if you’ve seen him before.

You swing open the door and his name touches your tongue and cold fills your lung and you heard it! You heard it long ago! You think you know. You swear you heard it young—that name so unsung—as dying breeze rattles the door you swung.

Your brows tense. Your sister passed young; his name moves your tongue:

“Death.”

It saturates your breath. Death.

“He’s the stranger who came to the door.”

Tick, tock goes the grandfather clock, whispering from window light, sealing winter’s bite, joining your internal talk:

“Death’s the man coming ’round the block.”

He’s not so much a stranger as the danger you ignore till his croak calls no more for the pain you felt before. You’ve seen him before. You’d seen him before.

You choke back a cry and instead release a sigh as you step out the door and into dark dawn’s mist, balling a frostbit fist. You puff, you scuff asphalt you don’t feel, hard, hard earth beneath your heel, and tell yourself, keep telling yourself,

“This isn’t real.”

But your phone glows in your trembling hands: thirty-three missed calls of the croak again calling for the bawling you’ve curbed in your fist’s balling. You tap the first of the voicemails poured through the night.

“It’s your father—something’s come up—” chokes Mom. “Just call me, all right?”

Your phone slips through your fingers. You stop in the street, stop mid-stride. Your father has—father has—

All your life, your father had tried.

Your legs seize and you fall to your knees, road’s shock shooting tremors through your wheeze. Your tears splatter asphalt earthquakes, your ears between shoulder shakes. Chin to your chest, rocks in your breast, you rediscover all your breaks, as the stranger who came to your door steps his boots before yours.

They swirl air’s vapor around your knees where mists taper.

His boots. Your wide eyes gleam a reflection of the feet you’ve seen; but, this time, through doubt’s veil, beyond this temporal trail, you see more than shadow. Your phone sputters the second voicemail and you stare at the boots of the stranger you know.

He came, he came. You remember his name.

“Please call me,” says your mother into the ground, your phone face-down. “Your father, he’s burning up—”

You press yourself up, cast your eyes up, grimace looking up the silhouette of the reaper that came before and wonder if you’re too done for. The sun vaults horizon, squints your stare, Death’s face blocked by a glare.

The next voicemail plays.

“He’s passed. Around six—they say he went fast.”

“Six?” you mouth.

Six p.m. yesterday: seconds before that stranger came. Your breath bursts out your lips as the man, smiling down, softly grips your shoulder kindling flame. The fog dies; cheek’s tear dries; before a blazing sunrise, stands the man who shares your eyes.

You’ve seen him before, the man you’ve always had. The man who came to your door, that angel is your dad.