Brass handle worn smooth by other endings—ten thousand palms before hers, each believing theirs was the first apocalypse. She stands in the hallway that exists outside jurisdiction, where vows go to die of natural causes. Twenty years condensed to manila folders. Joint became sole. We became I. Our became mine.
The door knows her before she touches it. Doors develop memory in places like this, learn to recognize the particular weight of before-and-after. She's brought exhibits: Text messages fossilized in screenshot amber. Bank statements autopsied with highlighter. The wedding photo—exhibit A—where they're both looking just slightly past the camera, as if they could already see this hallway, this door.
Inside, the future has a filing system for the division of Christmas ornaments and children, for who keeps the dog's anxiety medication, for the algebra of wounds too precise for poetry. She thinks of the phoenix, how it never hesitates, how mythology makes destruction look like choice.
Her hand on the brass. In the building's basement, the boiler kicks on. Somewhere, another door opens. Somewhere, vows are being spoken. The handle turns. The world divides.