At the top of the broken escalator, we stop to catch our breaths. While we remind our lungs how to expand and contract at a not-frenzied pace, we watch the people coming up after us. A teenage girl with long brown hair has her tongue in her boyfriend’s ear like she’s digging the last bits of ice cream out of a cone. A group of children rush up shouting, pretending the climb is a boot camp drill and their fingers are bent to form the shapes of guns. A woman follows them and her eyes dart from one scampering body to the next, never letting them out of her sight, and in the shape of her smile we could find all of the words for all of the poems we can never write. An elderly couple reaches the top; they stand just beyond the escalator mouth. Quietly, they hold each other. We look away.
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