Three Hours Between the 34th and 35th

Three Hours Between the 34th and 35th

A face like moths’ wings, beautiful to somebody, I’m sure,
hands a frantic mess of repetition, pushing buttons deeper
than they were willing, by far screaming more loudly
into the intercom than I was into the dry well of hope
at the bottom of what passes for my soul – me,
I’m an inside screamer. And she was old, seasoned,
but only because the situation had momentarily made her so,
a Communion wafer deeper, young, naïve,
in that “first day in hell” kind of, “Okay, I’ve ‘Abandoned
All Hope,’ but will you hold my hand while we walk
through the gate?” Of course, she didn’t say that,
and I didn’t think it at the time, only how I would be late
to sit in traffic, I wonder what the monthly electric
on a heap like this costs, and if someone liked to kill people,
this is a pretty good place to do it, but I really
didn’t say that last part – she looked like the suggestible type.
Her weapon of choice: a lethal crush of expectation
that I would pop the buttons on my shirt, reveal the consonant
on my chest, take her in one arm, and, with my other,
punch our way into the shaft above, soaring past the floors
our destinations should have been, higher, through the roofline
we knew eventually would come, into the life of nothingness
and blue that the sky loves both so well, and somewhere
beyond that… I crashed back into sobriety and that
“still here” feeling that is the hang-over after a daydream.
I looked at her, a smile fluttered across my face,
to the elated horror of my sensibilities, caught without a net.
She looked at me, wings oscillating like slow inebriation,
releasing more pheromones into the air than I was comfortable
breathing.