Floor 89.

 

I think I'm dying,

Could it be that I have forgotten how to breathe?

In and out with every breath my lungs repeat

That monotonous track that sustained my life,

The only constant I could've relied on.

 

And now it just stops?

 

I  gasp for air,

Find nothing, but the deep, ominous, looming, void

Of water that isn't there,

Of air escaping in bubbles traveling nowhere.

Shouldn't they be traveling upwards unlike the lifeless corpse of which my consciousness still lingers?

 

I think,

(Really not the usual habbit of a sinking, lingering, floating cadaver)

"Am I dead?"

 

But I begin to feel something,

Like the reverberation of a nearby train.

The echo of my sister's type of music:

the kind formed with the beat,

the bass bouncing through magnetic speakers and aluminum car doors.

I feel something similar to being stuck in an enormous grandfather clock,

with seconds ticking away like atom bombs detonated in a series,

One by one by lub... dub... lub... dub.

Like the beating and convulsion of a human heart beneath a hollow set of ribs.

 

The train comes closer and dings as it's railway crossing post descends.

Descending me into a madness.

 

"Am I DEAD?!"

I shout into the void.

 

Lub... dub... lub.. dub.. lub Dub Lub Dub Lub Dub

LUB DUB.

 

I feel as if my chest is going to explode as if someone has sent me into hyper drive.

"Am I dying?"

 

Her?

 It couldn't have been her,

 I pressed the buttons with my own warm shaking fingers.

 

At least I could feel them!

I could feel them then too,

My palms sweaty, clammy,

 My fingertips burning and still shaking I'm afraid,

Just like the words on my tongue,

('Can I be your girlfriend?').

 

I pressed the button then too,

But then the destination didn't seem to matter

Compared to the thrill of entering the elevator and with my own fingers,

 Giddy like a child given access pressing every floor.

 

Neve knowing what awaited at the top,

I could've gotten off,

Hadn't I ascended high enough?

 

But my rational thought was gone before floor number twenty,

And she was there on evey floor,

Boarding and boarding and boarding,

The closed confines and capacity of our small elevator an enigma.

 

I think I'm dying,

I am convinced my blood is poison pumping through my vains,

Lub... dub... lub... dub... lub pain dub pain,

Pain. Pain. Pain

My chest is being impaled by swords.

 

The elevator seemed perfect.

(Everything always does.)

Fears at first discussed soon evaporated when escaping our lips,

Whose response to absense was to find anothers.

 

And so we kissed and shared secrets between breaths,

Laughed at ourselves,

And rid ourselves of mortality by beating solitude,

In elevator rooms with light up buttons,

And expanding walls that would grow with us.

 

I gargle salt and liquid my face flushed,

"I am drowning"

At last there is water.

 

At floor 89 she got off,

And elevator walls caved in and...

 

I think I'm dying at floor 89 inside my head.