You are in elevator 41463
and you are going down
and you think about what he said
the last time he pulled himself out of you,
how your name slid off his tongue
and onto the peak of your throat
and beaded there, hot, still, throbbing.
You put your hand to your mouth
and you catch yourself behind a man
in a dark suit, his feet shoulder width apart.
You are both going down.
You imagine his body
pieced together, pinned
in the black dark of a box.
The man steps off and you
are alone and going down.
You remember the lentil soup,
dark wood, your mother’s coffee.
Sometimes you think you understand,
but his eyes were half shut
and it was a such short fight.
The doors open and two women step on.
They are talking about their children,
and you see a pit of bodies
light as breadcrumbs beneath a black soil.
The numbers flash above you,
you swallow, loud and thick,
and the three of you are going down.
They stop talking,
and you think about his socks
balled beneath the bed,
the screen door shutting after him,
the feeling of an entire day,
and suddenly you feel bloodless,
the weight of you like a wooden bucket going down.
When you are alone again
you sidle up beside yourself
but you can’t bring yourself to speak
anything but the names of things.
Dirt, cedar, ditch.
You smell a second person in the heat.
You both are going down.
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