Click, click, click…
Who’s knocking at the door? No one. Just knocking on the next door. What’s it like knocking on my door?
Haven’t heard it for a long time.
Once, long ago, there was a clock on the door everyday. Friends rushed in. Lots of flowers, candy, cakes and laughs… Those days of yore to Hạnh, were like in paradise. Hạnh had an expensive cassette-player.
With friends over, she turned it on and they danced to the music. Dances that shook the floor. Then they all disappeared, years passing by.
Then one day, not a friend, but an elegant and talented gentleman came knocking at the door. He was sitting on that chair, thin lips and weather-beaten, earlier-grayed hair. He was lost in short clips of poetry which seemed to be declarations to be thrown into the world.
They used to be classmates, when they felt real hot sitting close together. But now, just an echo of the old days. He came with poetry. He said no one understood his poems, not even a very close poet. No, they were not difficult to understand. Hạnh didn’t find it difficult to understand his poetry.
At the very beginning of human life, Adam and Eva only sinned against God, not against their fellow-humans. Now their descendants also committed sins as their ancestors had done, then it was not hard to understand.
He had knocked and came in. He then sat there reading his poems. The lonely rhymes were looking for their “sameness”. Without any positive or negative comments whatsoever, Hạnh just let him go his own course, as long as he pleased.
She couldn’t do anything else even though feelings were arising within her. How come? It was believed that no one knew what would happen when two souls were in the same mood. But nothing happened, though. She was listening and he was reading.
Then he left, truly and did not come back. He was said not to write poetry any more. That was what I heard of. No one cared about him. May be Hạnh didn’t, either. On the other hand, Hạnh knew very well that he had sat on that chair reading his poetry for five years, a time long enough for Hạnh’s enthusiastic friends to raise a family with a lot of responsibilities. And so, to Hạnh, they were to be forgotten.
He had gone never to return. No one would knock at her door at night. She forgot the crack made by her door but she knew for sure: at that time every evening she would imagine the knocking, just soft knocking as made by a poet, like rain drops in spring falling on the roof, like a lonely wind blowing through the window.
Click, click, click...
Who’s knocking at the door? No one is.
However, please, not to knock at any doors with those lonely rimes.
- Nguyễn Đức Thiện