Member Poem

I’ve been here before,
standing in the all-glass elevator heading
to the top of the Sears Tower
with Chicago looking like a cheap
plastic Lego set

You’re here again too, trying to block
out the vastness of Lake Michigan with the flats
of your hands, your mouth shaping words “I can’t get
what I want.”

Now we’re approaching 1,400 feet
my voice trying to respond but sound has become
suspended alongside us. . .

I’ve been here before
 looking through walls, wondering if your hands, your mouth,
our Windy City is just another dream.
I try to make the elevator cogs freeze where they are,

stay in the cold Midwestern sky
instead, steel wheels keep turning. We begin to descend,
drop away from my words
still drifting where I left them.