For the first time in a film-strip length reel of nights,
I took a deep breath,
intended for comfort, yet setting me into a frenzy,
and opened the door on the third level of my mind, entitled unknown.
Previous doors a year earlier,
had awakened me with blood in my mouth,
and a distinct dizziness akin to stepping out on a caldera's rim
balancing on one foot, and listening to a volcano's haughty chuckle.
Other doors, painted purple and mulberry red,
had once slammed closed on my foot,
breaking toes and challenging me to walk in straight line,
knowing I would stumble.
Not this door.
True to its prophetic title,
I felt myself list forward, surging into robing-egg blue water.
Sinking quickly to another level,
I saw wooden walls come alive with the colors of a frenzied painter's palette.
Swirling, slinking, swishing colors bumped into me,
shimmying me to the side,
where there lay the carcass of a sailor's long-ago home
deathly quiet in its indigo and granite gray grave.
Anemones waved their poisonous hellos
and animals with two sets of eyes flew away,
a warning for a shadow eclipsing the sunlight disc above me,
where my door still stood open flopping contentedly on watery hinges.
A smooth shape the shade of forest and speckled moss
sunk towards me,
momentarily tumbling my world into darkness.
It seemed minutes only,
before my fingers curled around the knob of my door, entitled unknown,
where I heaved my body out of the wet and wondrous world,
and for a moment I glanced backwards,
only to see the sea-life swimming serenely in sunlit circles,
inviting me to loosen my grip and fall backwards into a continuous dream.
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