Mad World
Suzi Zimmerer
Mad World
by Kathryn Punsly
I went somewhere familiar
But saw an unfamiliar door
Once opened I found
A large hole in the dry wall
Big enough for a person to fit through.
I hunched over and climbed in.
I perched on the pipe
Like a vulture
And sat in the darkness.
I could feel the running of water below me.
I thought, maybe,
I could sit in the darkness forever.
Create your own sensory deprivation chamber.
A dark mahogany door
That reaches all the way to the bottom
With not even a sliver of light that slips in.
Eleven floors up
Looking down into the dark distance
Like an abandoned elevator shaft
Like a black canary in a coal mine
Silence save for the jack-hammer heartbeat
But eventually even your heart adjusts to the dark
Everyone soon learned I was there
This was a cry for help, after all
I was on the brink of death.
At any moment
The pipe breaking under my weight
The loss of balance
The eleven-story fall
And long pause before the ground
