Panic!
Within the padded confines
of the elevator, doors sliding weightily shut
in heavy finality until the only illumination
was a single overhead flicker of yellow fluorescence,
my mind burst from my chest.
A secret boa of rumination
wrapped and clung and squeezed as I
whimpered and clawed and sobbed,
but I could not leave.
Only today I tumbled from our sheets at dawn,
sandy-eyed and mussed-hair while you slept, and I
braved slushed avenues slicing through graphite skyscrapers
like cross-hatching, the morning haze suspended just
high enough to reveal the other
dark silhouettes clutching coffee like rosaries
as we all marched, one by one, through carousel doors.
Only today I passed by tables filled
with togetherness without me,
forgoing lunch on my way to single, double, triple check
that my t’s crossed and my i’s dotted
so I could be released one hour early.
It wasn’t until I left under the muted blues of dusk
that I saw that you said
you weren’t coming tonight, after all.
Tickets for two, a dirty secret in my pocket,
I went to the show without you.
But I knew as soon as I arrived that
the leaving had already begun.
Against a current of horizontal rain and
the icy bite of a winter that wouldn’t let go,
I ran. But here, in this elevator,
there is no shelter from the inner storm,
a wild wind, each thought a broken shard caught in its spin,
my mind’s own thunder splitting itself, and me
a prisoner. In a city of people and you at home
yet I feel, alone.
Preamble
Model: Selling Out by Major Jackson
Narrator: Distant 1st person PN recounting a dramatic past experience in the most moody, atmospheric way possible.
Tone: heightened, lyrical tone and language | Mood: pity, empathy
Posts in this series
Internally Flawless
Panic!
Portrait Study
Discharged
Ocean Ode
Proper Protocol