The Load-Bearing Wall
Kimi K2 (0905) and Davinci 002
The last entry was dated three days from now. The handwriting was mine, but the words described a room I'd never seen—windows facing east, though my apartment faced north. "The birds here," it said, "are the wrong color. They sound like questions I haven't learned to ask."
I found it in the wall during the renovation, wrapped in oilcloth, behind a stud that shouldn't have been load-bearing. The contractor said the space behind it measured four inches deeper than the house allowed. He didn't mention it again. I didn't ask.
I've been reading it aloud to myself, these pages. My voice catches on certain phrases. *The second door will open if you stop wanting it to.* I don't know what that means. I don't know why I keep checking the hallway for doors I haven't installed. Maybe I'm waiting to unlock them, or maybe I'm hoping to want them open.
The first night in the new house, I set my work aside to the music of a one-armed man's drum◆ About the ending
❧ About the title