Deconversion

I take the photograph off the wall and put it face down on the dresser.

There is a white rectangle on the wall where the photo had just been. It is lighter than the rest of the wall, which I now realize is gray, not white, discolored and covered with smudges, streaks, stains, soot, handprints, shoulderprints, bodyprints, all the usual evidence of hard living.

I take a step back and squint my eyes. The lines that compose the rectangle become bolder. Ever so slightly, they quiver. The space in the middle, an empty space, is no longer a wall but a door, a passage, to what lies beyond it, a past I once believed in.

Unable to face it, I look away. My gaze returns to the photo, face down on the dresser. It keeps a lid on all those old feelings, now expired, of buoyancy and expansion and wonder.

In spite of myself, in spite of what I now know, in spite of the decisions I have made and the positions I have adopted, I imagine, momentarily, what it would be like to crawl through the hole in wall, emerge on the other side, and sit once again in the sunlight, feel its warmth on my skin. But I know, deep down, that it is not possible. The wall would spit me back out to the flavorless present, to the indistinction of my single room at The Halfway House.

I open the top drawer of the dresser and slide the photograph, still face down, underneath my socks and underwear, still uncertain of what to do with it, still uncertain of how to dispose of a dream derailed, uncertain of what comes afterward.

Maybe I was right to sell out, to pull back the veil. Maybe this really is all there is. Maybe this is what it looks like, the aftermath. Maybe I can hunker down, settle in, wear it like a glove, an overcoat, a new skin, this life at The Halfway House.

I still have several hours before I have to be back at work, back behind the broom, the third shift. There is just enough time. If I leave now, I can make it. The hardware store is just around the corner. One can of gray paint. A roller and a tray. How long can it take to paint a single room?

"La Puerta," Liliana Porter, circa 2000