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NARRATIVE 6

You once dreamed of bedding down in elevators.

Maybe your young life had been touched

by prolonged contact with suburban commerce.

Maybe you had been sexually confounded

by the strain of cinnamon in the air,

or bleating saxophones beamed from low orbit.

Maybe you skipped pennies across

the dimpled waters of the fountain

and recited under your breath

wishes so desperate you recanted in that instant.

Teenagers veered about in misery.

Mall-walkers hissed like adders.

There were grandchildren, there were balloons

they had all let go of, screaming,

there were anatomically indistinct

iterations of the human body

wearing suggestions of life behind glass windows.

It should not go unsaid

how happy you were.

How free of predatory lending practices.

Your ligaments did creak

like ropes in a storm.

You dreamed of dreaming about nothing else.

Only this:  rising, descending,

over and over until no one would come in,

and you were alone in a box.

You thought of coffins,

how complacent a comparison,

you said to nobody in particular

as you waited for the doors to shut and motion to resume.