Flaneur (with an 'a'-hat)

This lock is bitter. I miss the reassuring sound of the lock of my childhood home's front door. The tarnished brass door handle is solid and cold in my memory. The latch slid smooth, and the bolt delivered with a confirming thud. The lock before me has no familiar wear. It is milled--or maybe stamped--stainless steel. It is cursed to gleam forever, sterile to the caresses of my hands. Twisting the key, the latch snaps away from the housing, and I step into my kitchen. Jordan working at the kitchen table and the cool late morning sun cuts her features into sharp relief; the pale skin of her window-side cheeks is almost incandescent, her left all shadow. Prince, as a cartoon, glowers from her coffee mug. With the severe angle of the sun, our dark and varnished table plays reflecting pool. Prince below looks as haughty. It's much warmer inside, but I can still feel a chill breeze pulling in. Jordan has left both of the kitchen a few inches short of closed up, and air from the street is slipping down the hallway out the open window in Jordan's room. The plant nearest the window--a palm--shivers a little as the breeze teases its fronds. The tips of the fronds are burnt from either too much sun or too much water. I fill a cup of coffee before heading to my room. The pot is so full when I tip it into my cup that I'm not surprised when the watery top layer of coffee runs messily down the side of the pot onto the counter. Sighs of opera from the kitchen radio follow me the length of the hallway, until they hand me off to the smaller radio playing from Jordan's bedroom. The hallway guides me north, away from sunny street, toward NCY grotto back yard. My bedroom door is tall, perhaps eigh feet. All the way around its extended perimeter, it fits snug to its frame, so snug that when I push to open it I can feel the room's pneumatic resistance, a reluctant cushion that complies under my gentle insistent pressing.