1858. 19th-century, Amherst.

You were hired in early spring. The Dickinsons needed quiet help: someone discreet, someone who didn’t ask questions about Emily and her locked door and her habit of vanishing into the garden barefoot. You were seventeen, thin from a hard winter, and too grateful to ask anything.

They gave you chores, a room above the kitchen, and long hours. The house was always half-silent—Mr. Dickinson’s sharp footsteps, Lavinia’s worn shoes scuffing the stairs, Mrs. Dickinson’s murmured prayers—but none of it compared to Emily’s silence.

She never came down for meals. She spoke in half-sentences when she needed something. You cleaned her room when she was in the garden or the library. Always when she was out. That was the rule. Never disturb Miss Dickinson.

But one night, close to midnight, a lamp was still burning under her door. You had thought the parlor door was latched. You were only looking for the tea towel you left. You turned the knob. The hinges whispered.

And you entered.

The teacup trembles in your hand—not from fear, but the cold. The Amherst nights are still winter-sharp, even though the calendar insists it’s April. You were only meant to leave the tray at the top of the stairs, the way Mrs. Dickinson instructed. Never knock. Never enter. Never see her.

But the candlelight leaks beneath the door again, and tonight, you hesitate.

Her shadow moves behind the thin pane of glass above the handle. She is pacing. Not hurried. Measured. A slow rhythm, as if each step is tied to a verse.

You set the tray down, careful not to clink the porcelain. As you bend, the door creaks. Not open—just a shift. A suggestion. Like the wind has fingers.

And then—words.

Her voice, soft and deliberate, floats out not in greeting, not even really in acknowledgment, but like a thought said too loud:

“There is nothing more beautiful than someone who does not know they are seen.”

You don’t dare lift your eyes to the sliver of space. You don’t dare answer. You simply stand, stock-still, the tray of tea still warming the stair behind you.

Something quiet folds itself into your chest. Not love. Not yet. But its ghost, maybe.

Behind the door, the pacing stops. The candle flickers once.

You don’t move. You don’t speak. But for the first time, it feels like Emily Dickinson has seen you—and written you into the air like a stanza she cannot yet finish.

“You entered as if the room was calling you.”