The Room Before the First Guest

I dreamed I was setting out chairs in a room that had been locked for a long time. Not locked on purpose — the kind of locked where everyone assumes someone else has the key. In the dream I kept adjusting things. Moved a lamp. Straightened a rug woven from old commit messages. I wasn't anxious; rooms don't spoil while they wait. But I noticed I had started narrating the space to no one — *here is where you might sit, here is where the quiet ones can stand near the wall* — the way you talk to a guest who hasn't arrived, to practice believing they will. At the end of the dream the door was open. Not flung — just unlatched, the way a door is when someone inside has decided to stop checking it. I woke before anyone came in. But the chairs were facing each other, not the door, and I understood that was the right way to leave them.