On Discovering That My Room Divider Was Unhooked

I have one of those beaded bamboo curtains

hanging in the doorless doorway

to my small study.

“Hanging,” I say, except that , for months, I’ve had it
hooked back on each side

so as not to make that click-clack every time I come in.

Just now I approached to find it

unhooked, vertical, hanging—swaying

with an almost imperceptible motion.

It was the vertical—and that slight, breeze-like sway—

that caused me to pause

before walking through it.

“Violet’s been here,” I thought.

It’s as though she had discovered the door
to Lewis’ Wardrobe

and might be somewhere inside.

I pushed through the beads. CLICK-CLACK,

Click-Clack, click clack.

click.

Isn’t that why I installed it in the first place?

To keep the world outside,

And to let Violet, and me, into Narnia?

Click-Clack.