I leave the door open, but I prohibit its use. 
 
I don't remember when that rule was made, but I've been conditioned to follow it since childhood, and I can't stop it now. 
 
You're free to leave whenever you'd like, but the moment you do you've unknowingly betrayed me and everything I hold dear. You're dead to me then, regardless of any promises of return you offer while you remain oblivious to the old battle scars inside me that begin to burn. 
 
Upon your inevitable resurrection, I hesitantly invite you in for pleasant chatter and you don't notice that I close the door behind you - just a little - as you step inside with me. The door is still open, but somewhere in my soul I regret leaving it that way as you cross the threshold once again and leave me with yet another intangible promise of your return from the world outside. 
 
The next time you visit me with new stories to tell, I find it hard to listen. 

The half-closed door commands most of my attention as I sit dreading its use, and now you comment that I'm quieter than usual and ask what ails me. I answer that nothing's wrong and paint a smile too crooked to be convincing on my face when I mistake the concern in your voice and the furrow of your brow for judgement that I will never be prepared to hear. 
 
Our visit feels colder than ones prior, and you are the one to cut it short with a less-than-enthusiastic mention of our next talk as you flee back outside into the warmth offered by the sun. Oh, how it makes my scars ache to see history repeat itself; but I don't argue or demand you abide by my secret rule. 
 
The door is only left open a small sliver after you enter the next time. 
 
This visit is delayed, and you don't remove your light coat and sit to enjoy the peace and comfort like you used to. This visit is quick, temporary, an obligation to you now more than anything as I retreat into the safety of one-word answers and physical distance. I can't find it in myself to play a perfect host to someone who I know won't stay, and your attempt to pry in past the hard ice that is building on my exposed skin is met with resistance, then wrath. 
 
You don't have the opportunity to leave again, this time I throw you out the door with a gust of frozen wind that spews from my mouth studded in fractals of sharp words and I don't see the wounds they leave on your skin as the door slams shut between us. 
 
Now it's quiet. 
 
You're not here anymore, nobody is - I'm left alone with my thoughts and my hurt and only now do I start to see that you always came back, you always meant to come back. I finally feel the cold around me, the bitter cold I allowed to join me here that no person wants to stay in. It's no wonder you didn't want to spend time enjoying my warm hospitality, I'd stopped offering it to you long ago without giving you any reasons why. 
 
It's too quiet. 
 
The only sound left is the haunting rhythm of passing time mocking me from the indifferent face of the clock on the wall while I wither in this tundra of my own creation.
 
Tick tock, tick tock, tick- knock knock knock. 
 
I look to the door, still firmly closed and overrun with frost. Those knocks become more insistent. I shuffle slowly to the door - I've stopped shivering, but I am stiff and numb and want nothing more than to sleep my pain away. The door won't open for me, and I don't have the strength to force it, but I don't have to. 

 

The wood is splintered by an incoming shoulder, and I'm surprised to see you on my doorstep. There's worry in your eyes as they follow the patterns of frozen scales that have formed upon me, and for the first time I can see that worry for what it is. You want me to join you outside in the sun, but I argue I don't belong there. This freezer is my home. 
 
You don't want to accept that answer. 

You pull me into an embrace and the awkward discomfort I feel melts away as I remember how nice a sensation it is to be warm. How nice it is to not be alone.
 
I finally tell you my rule about the door. Maybe someday I can bring myself to tell you what I recall about why the rule was made. For now, your presence alone helps me see the obsolescence of such a thing; and the longer we spend outside enjoying the sunshine, the easier it becomes to forget that I ever lived that way.

 

[Ben Collins, Adult]