A tall tarnished key standing upright on a charcoal plinth, its bit cut in the shape of a tiny doorway, dust motes falling through a warm shaft of light.

No. III · Permanent collection

Key for Unbuilt Doors

Material: Impossible
Provenance: Bequeathed by an architect who died with empty notebooks.
Condition: Certain of itself

It fits every lock that was never made.

Every unbuilt house still has its doors: the ones sketched and abandoned, the ones argued over at kitchen tables, the ones dreamt once and forgotten by morning. This key fits all of them. The bit is cut in the shape of a doorway because it is one. Turn it in the air, in an empty field, and you will hear, very softly, a latch give way somewhere that does not exist yet.