In my hand, lies a dark, rusted doorknob, thrumming with a life and memories of its own. I found it, in the desk in my mother's bedroom, locked away in a drawer all its own.
There is blood on this doorknob, the invisible kind that only the one the blood belongs to can see. It's in the palm of my hand, whispering my memories to me in some forgotten language. Mocking my ancient misery and pain. My mother kept this knob in spite, but I keep it to remind me.
The door this knob belongs to, was my bedroom door. Many secret things happened behind that door, and this knob saw them all. I can hear my child-like screams as I ran and hid from my mother all those years ago. When her anger at my father, thrived in my tears and blood. "It's your fault he's gone!" The doorknob hisses at me in my mother's voice. I feel the ghost bite of her slap on my flesh. And I can almost see the bruises on my back and thighs like some haunting reminder in the scuffed surface of the knob. Every hand that ever touched it, was now touching mine, and I can feel them all. Tear-streaked fingertips, greasy against the handle on a rainy, autumn night. Sharp nailed fingers gripping in anger as my mother stormed from the room. Tiny, chubby fingers, holding the knob in desperation as my brother fought to get out and get food and water.
I look down at the knob in my hand, like some ancient curse come to follow me and haunt my dreams, it seemed to practically be screaming at me. But when I touched the metal to my cheek, tears running into it, I realize, it's just a knob.
Broken and stolen from its home for memories and spite, but a knob none-the-less. And I can no longer bear to look at it. I place it back in its timeless home and lock up the drawer. And I stand to leave.
"I never gave," I say to that desk, "I'm the last that remembers, and that knob won't bring me down." And I turn to leave the room, but not before I give it a new memory.
One of moving on...