“Tie your shoelace before the tenth floor or you’ll die in this elevator,”
is where my mind flies in this elevator.
My frail fingers tremble as I bend to my sneakers
and I feel my heartbeat on my thigh in this elevator.
The floor numbers brighten and darken as we pass them,
like eyes too weak to stay open––soon my own eyes in this elevator.
Secondary fears seize my brain: there’s no service to send an “I love
you,” and I realize I can’t be mollified in this elevator.
Is that sound an infant’s giggling, or stilettos’ squeaking,
or the cries I cannot seem to cry in this elevator?
I search for recollections of fruit juice slaloming through my palm’s
creases, for my brother’s eye-roll, for verbs other than “to die” in this
elevator.
But Sydney completes her double knot by the ninth floor,
so, this time, it’s as if nothing went awry in this elevator.
by Sydney Wilson