Riding, it occurred to me
that there is no thing
as time in an elevator,
that refrigerator of numbers
whose novocained dramaturgy
pauses us—  the moments of nonexistance
enumerated and redundant.
Secret orders of the fibonacci
drag across our digits:   fumbling, folded,
crosswise patterned against our chests.
It’s where we hide our hearts,   frozen in the stillness of the climb and fall.

The elevator smells of numbness, and
as the doors open we are born,
squares from an icebox
caught between the floor and ceiling.
This is the thought that no one thinks of,
except, perhaps, the operator,
as he charts the simple up and down
of a day’s work

his riders melting in a night
that becomes the better half of
morning.