Can
When I opened the can, cold metal touched my palm. The moisture beaded on its surface spread slowly between my fingers, and that coolness ran up to my wrist. The plastic of the chair had already gone cold in the night air, and the two colds overlapped as if they recognized each other. I slowly opened my palm and closed it again, and in that repetition, the night was coming, little by little, to resemble my temperature.
I think of a time at the foot of the stairs when milk taken from the refrigerator quickly came to resemble the night air's temperature. Before long the milk was the same warmth as the inside of my palm, and I couldn't tell which had begun to take after the other first.
While the milk, warm as a palm, waited under the stairs, the dampness on the can was already vanishing into the air. Both were giving way, little by little, to the same night.
When the night air brushed the back of my hand, I realized the front door handle had been waiting at the same temperature for a long time. Before stepping out, I decided to walk a little farther without looking back.
The moment I let go of the handle, the door prepares to return to its own temperature. Since learning that, my place has become neither the side I step out to nor the side the door waits on, but the very brief gap upon the threshold.