Gears grind and the cords wrap around them
Making the machine go up
Or down
Or wherever you want it to go
I want it to go up.
I looked through all my books and tried to reconcile with the girl that I used to be, before I became calloused. The water should not have sifted me so; the salt should not have made my skin so raw. And yet, I’m thrown upon this shore with my exterior smoothed over the way it should be.
Should it be that I go up,
Or go down?
The elevator is so large. I am the only one in it. The walls are not covered in material or pictures that you might find on a hotel or school elevator. It is steel. It is someone’s job to polish this steel, and I thank God that it is not mine. But it could be. I could go down. I hear the gears, I feel the pull, and my head hurts.
Yesterday you told me that you loved me and that you wanted me to be happy. You think that working in an office, wearing a suite, making money and enough money to live comfortably, will make me happy. I told you that any decent paying job would not necessarily make me happy. I don’t like being poor all the time. I can go a week without spending more than ten dollars. I can regulate my heat and electricity so that my utility bills won’t exceed my paycheck. And, after all this, I can barely make rent. The stem of this tree goes way down. The roots spread out like a map, their age giving them dignity and complexity. This is how I would like to think of myself: an ageless tree full of life. But I am reminded by you and by what you say is love, that my wisdom is immaturity. My weapons don’t work against a man with a chisel that made sparks and created an elevator, an elevator that won’t stop going up.
I pushed the button. I am responsible for the ascension. What I know I am not responsible for is the man and the chisel. I did not want men to come into this world and create a place for me to make such a decision. I did not want men to make a map of how I should live my life, of how you tell me and your love tells me I should survive in this world. I want my map of roots while he insists on gears, cords and steel.
I believe that within all of us there is a need to flee. If I could count all the times when I said, “Let’s just go. Let’s go to the mountains somewhere and build a house and shoot deer and eat deer and never come back,” then I would be quite tired of counting. We all do this. Instead of thinking of it as a negative thing, I want more impulsiveness. I don’t possess it anymore. Chained down my series of responsibilities, actions and consequences, I am standing in an elevator going up.
