For one week now
Each time I arrive at work
Unlocking the door is slightly easier
The key which unlocks the shop
Can no longer be confused
With another key
     You see
Its doppelganger of brass
No longer shares space on my keyring

It isn’t that I lost it
I always keep spares (when they’re mine)
I lost something else

Something behind that door
Isn’t where it has been
     up to now
So keys become futile really
When not granting access

I still have keys to my parents’ house
     somewhere
Though I haven’t been home in years
I even kept the keys to my first apartment
     back in Little Five
Somehow I suspect that even after a decade
Those keys would still unlock my old doors
Though of course
Ten years later what’s inside is
     I’m sure
Nothing I would recognize

These keys are nostalgia
More than anything else
They remind me of places in my past
Which gave refuge
I have always been fascinated by keys
As a child I tried locking every door
     in Grandma’s house
With a rusted skeleton key found hanging on a nail
I still have that one somewhere too
Though I haven’t called Grandma in years

It seems to me that keys are a lie
We’ve all agreed to tell one another
As if a determined force could not
Tear any door off its hinges
Possessing keys provides a comfort
In believing nothing gets in without them
But we all know better privately
     behind closed doors