Dendrite doors

We learned they would come after midnight.
At least, I learned this on my own.
The neighbors all knew where those footsteps led. 
The lights had been killed before...and it was a signal still.
The horror was trapped in the suspense.
They never knocked. That was the true terror.

I never lived this way. I learned how.
Why have doors, they would all conclude,
since all else had been stripped away?
When we strip wood, it's raw hide-
stripped skin shows through.
We all know the smell.
And screens are illusions like musty hospital curtains.
Did you know that there is no word for Privacy in Russia-
just keep this to yourself.

I knew an American woman 
that imported 14-foot tall exotic hardwood doors from Indonesia.
She had them installed or erected
in a financed rehab mansion in Southern California;
they divided the living from the sitting room 
and the doors were always open.
It took two to move them.
When she was evicted from the retreat she tried to steal them. 
She went to prison. Not just for the doors.
She'd tried to escape to Mexico.

And although before my time,
I liked Jim Morrison's poetry 
back when I was just little and more morose.
Now his poetry seems hollow, soft in spots.

I was petrified to eventually find 
purple heart in deep prose,
and blocks of solid Bolivian Rose by Burmese blackwood 
so fresh it bleeds,
still...life with leaves and family trees fall
and knots make it all stronger.

We learned about the grind and carpentry,
sand smoothes stone and wood. 
Don't cut against the grains. Leave room to breathe.
I tend leave my doors ajar, 
and query why we each have so many 
inside.
I like my peephole. 
That was a solid design.
Unlike suspension bridges which transfer tension
and tend to be fire retardant. 

Now how can we move on,
without looking back. Locks break.
We cannot ignore these partitions anymore.
Divide and Conquer, knock on wood, 
for your own good and I should warn you-
I am not decent but have found a match. 

Photograph (by 'not given') of the massive old wooden doors of Mission San Gabriel which withstood the attacks of the Indians, ca.1908. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.