Subterranean

And so that morning,
we set out in business shoes,
tip-toeing toward the darkness on the edge of the platform
toward the same void that made cool musky breezes on our faces and
held us trembling on its edge for all those commuter years.
We set down our bags and phones, briefcases and reports,
and straddled the rail and the “Danger: High Voltage”
lowering our coffeed bodies onto the tracks
past the “AUTHORIZED” and
“ONLY” with cautious steps, into the mystery.

Then,
as we walked,
you on one side,
the electric rail on the other,
Darkness became our new light,
and ozone our preferred air
and whispered words eased into open speech,
until with our eyes closed, unneeded, devolved,
we faced the rest of our cool humid lives,
hand in hand,
walking,
growing and
dying beneath the world that once clenched our souls,
in the earth which cradles only our bodies,
our hearts floating through the tunnels like wisps.