Doors

There are so many different shades of me here.  I see them in the shadows, on the brick paths and darting in and out of imposing buildings.  Some laze in the sun on grassy lawns, others linger in the doorway for a farewell kiss-a few drag their downcast faces across the lawn in an endless battle against unseen opponents. 
I am everything here, and I am nothing.  Somewhere there is a girl smiling down from a balcony while torches burn and one figure in black gazes back at her lithe figure.  Less than a quarter mile away there is the girl who didn't make it lying face down in a ravine after a flight with a jarring end.
A million places I could walk tonight, and see a million things- but somehow my feet take me back to the beginning of this path that I am on now.  Through a door and up a set of stairs, pausing to rest a hand on a worried knob.  Locked of course, and then back out and up another short flight to stare unseeingly at a door that I cannot open even if I had the key.  I know what is inside, pain and love and desire. 
I have followed this tradition that a million coeds before me knew; not a sorority ritual or a plank of wood-but the loss of innocence and the first real glimpse of the world.  I pity the girl behind that door, and I'm proud of her.  I know that she has years of hurt ahead of her but I also know that this one survives. 
My first day back on campus I suck away and stared at this door, somehow this is the one shade I can't escape.  I suppose somehow that means something, whether or not I'm willing to admit it. 

And tomorrow I will go through with a charade that is pure pageantry, but still it will mean that this place no longer belongs to me.  I pick my pieces up and walk away and leave only shades and shadows and one brown locked door.