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.