Six a.m. The floor is cold.
Both feet down. Heels on the boards.
Count to three and lift my head.
There's a glass by the bed since Thursday.
There's a coat on the chair, still damp.
I move the glass. I hang the coat.
Two feet of counter. Cleared.
There's a plant on the sill gone brittle,
Brown at the edge, green in the middle.
I fill a cup at the kitchen tap
And I give it what I've got.
One stair. Then the next stair.
Hand on the rail. Pull.
The hallway's empty all the way up.
Nobody's carrying this but me.
Climbing, hand over hand,
Out of the low blue room.
Nobody lit the stairs for me.
I climb them in the dark.
Climbing, floor after floor after floor,
The damp coat heavy on my back.
Face still blank in the stairwell glass.
Feet still going up.
I pull the blinds up with two fingers.
The street's still there. The mail's still late.
Forty-one messages. I answer one,
The one where somebody said my name.
Two words on the screen: I'm up.
Thumb over send for a long time.
Then laces. Then the door. Then cold
That turns my breath white.
One block. Then the next block.
Hands out of my coat now.
The street's empty all the way down.
Nobody's carrying this. So I carry it.
Climbing, hand over hand,
Out of the low blue room.
Nobody lit the stairs for me.
I climb them in the dark.
Keys in my hand at the curb.
Same road. Same dark. Same three lights.
I haven't driven it since.
I turn the engine over.
The dash comes up green on my hands.
The heater ticks. The road unrolls.
And low in my chest something moves,
Not a flame yet. A coal.
Maybe I'm still burning.
Maybe I'm still burning.
Climbing, hand over hand,
Out of the low blue room.
Climbing, hand over hand,
Out of the low blue room.
Maybe I'm still burning.
Sun's not up. I'm going anyway.
Sun's not up. I'm going anyway.
Still dark at the top of the hill.
The road goes up. So I go up.
