The Hallway Became a Room
A Liminal Story
The hallway doesn’t look like much.
A few feet of wood, a stretch of wall,
the same door I’ve passed a thousand times without pause.
But lately, I find myself stopping here,
lowering to the rug like I’ve arrived in a room that wasn’t here before.
I used to think the hallway was a place you moved through—
a space between destinations,
nothing more than a conduit for the day.
But it has taught me otherwise.
I’ve learned its weight.
Its quiet.
The way air can gather in a corner
like water in a still pool,
reflecting things I didn’t know I was carrying.
Some nights, the visitor comes.
I feel it before I see it—
the subtle press of presence through the wood,
like the threshold itself has begun to breathe.
I imagine it sitting there,
as it always does,
not asking, not waiting for me to move,
only existing in a shared pause.
Once, I thought I caught a shadow through the slit of light at the base of the door.
A shape low to the ground,
heavier than leaves or wind,
but lighter than footsteps.
I told myself it was the tree branch in the yard,
or the way dusk can play tricks on wood grain.
Still, I noticed how the air smelled faintly of earth and cold fur.
I don’t speak.
I don’t reach for the knob anymore,
not even in the half‑hearted way I once did.
I’ve learned the difference between an almost and an arrival,
and how both can be holy.
I trace the grain of the door with my eyes.
The candle on the chest flickers,
sending slow shadows across the rug,
and I realize that nothing has changed,
yet the whole hallway feels alive—
as if the house and I
have agreed to remember something together.
Sometimes my hand drifts to the knob,
not to open it,
just to feel the cool metal
and let it remind me that closeness
doesn’t always require crossing.
And in that long pause,
I feel met.
By the visitor.
By the air.
By some quiet part of myself I used to rush past
on my way to somewhere else.
I stay as long as the stillness lets me,
listening without sound,
breathing without urgency.
Now and then,
I think I hear a faint shift on the porch,
like the brush of fur against wood
or the slow exhale of something alive.
I never look long enough to know.
I never open the door.
But when I finally rise,
the hallway doesn’t feel like a pass‑through anymore.
It feels like a kept promise.
A place where I let the world brush against me and something stayed.