10/23/2025
He isn’t sure when the doormat became his island, only that it is warmer than concrete and quieter than rain. The door won’t open for him—maybe it never has—but he guards it anyway, as if a life on the other side might remember his name and let him in.
He practices small ceremonies to keep the night from getting bigger: curl paws, hide the tender parts, count footsteps that pass without stopping. Sometimes a light arrives at the end of the hall and his ears lift like little prayers. It fades. The hallway goes back to being a long, empty throat that swallows sound.
If you kneel, he doesn’t move; hope is expensive and he’s learned to spend slowly. But when a palm hovers near his cheek, the air changes—the way rooms soften right before someone says “home.” He leans a little, just enough to admit that he remembers what kindness feels like.
He is not asking for much. A name that doesn’t echo. A bowl that doesn’t go empty. A door that knows him from the outside and the in. Until then he keeps his post: a small flame on a cheap rug, stubborn against the wind, waiting for a hand to cup it and say, “Stay.”
