Archive 09/03/08 - (1)

   

6:10

 

It was precisely 6:10,

Just as it had been, every morning before,

And presumably would be, every morning after that day —

 

The exact time you stood in front of the elevators,

On floor eighteen of your apartment building,

Before pressing the DOWN button.

 

It was precisely 6:10,

Because that was how you regulated things;

Otherwise, they fell apart, got away from you.

 

You knew this from the time of your big bang —

Your one debacle, when you were nineteen,

And you failed to heed the alarm clock,

 

Which tried to alert you to your first day of your first job,

The job at the metro bus depot, which you lost

Even before starting, for being three hours late.

 

But this morning, before you could press the button,

The elevator arrived, opened, startling you.

A matronly lady, with a newspaper tucked under one arm,

 

Slipped briskly out, smiled vaguely, turned right,

And strode down the hall, toward your door.

This or anything remotely similar had never happened,

 

Not in the twenty-five years you'd lived here, anyway.

Granted, the eighteenth floor had four apartments,

But the other three had been vacant for the last decade.

 

You slipped through the open doors

Just as they began to draw closed. You were miffed

(If, indeed, "miffed" expressed bafflement).

 

Who was that matronly lady? Had she really smiled at you,

Or were you imagining it?

And why would anyone be on your floor, at 6:10?

 

You were, save for the building's staff

(The morning shift came on at six or thereabouts),

The only person stirring, that early — without exception.

 

All day, at work, you couldn't concentrate,

For running, over, over, forward, backward, in your head,

In JFK-assassination/Zapruder-footage fashion,

 

That elevator opening, that lady exiting, bustling out,

Striding toward your apartment, at the east end of the hall,

As if she were a perfectly normal part of each 6:10 a.m.

 

That night, when you climbed down from the #7 bus,

Walked the three blocks, to your building,

Greeted the doorman, Julio, with a perfunctory wave

 

(All of this, always, at 5:33),

You elevated to eighteen (it took six "Mississippi"s).

As you stepped out, that same matronly lady

 

Zipped briskly past you, smiling vaguely,

Just before the elevator doors snapped shut.

You weren't at all sure 18B ever had been your apartment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

09/03/08 - (1)

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
       

 

 
   
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