Still listening for the Lock...

 I still jump when I hear a lock turn.

It doesn’t matter where I am. A grocery store. An office building. Someone else’s front door.

The sound reaches me before context does.

My body reacts faster than memory. Faster than logic. Faster than the part of me that knows it has been almost fifteen years.

I don’t think danger.
I think attention.

I notice exits. I clock where I am standing in relation to doors. I register who has keys without meaning to.

This isn’t fear in the way people expect it to be.
It’s orientation.

There was a time when a lock meant the world could narrow without warning. When the sound of it decided whether I was inside or out, protected or exposed, believed or mocked.

My life has changed since then. Entirely. Repeatedly.

But some lessons are learned in the nervous system, and they don’t keep calendars.

I no longer mistake this response for weakness.
It is evidence.

Evidence that my body learned how to listen when listening mattered.
Evidence that I survived something it does not need to forget in order for me to move forward.

I still jump when I hear a lock unlock.

And then I keep going.