You could taste the dust, the dirt of eons past and
with subtle licks of the tongue on air
know the distance of time there, inside the world.
Echoing steps, monsters to patter and boom and come back again,
smiling and dipping and finding placement
here,
where the stairs crawl.
Escher stairs in the space of my footsteps,
counting and connecting the rhythm of breathing,
spacing, pacing, taking the breath of my screaming.
Silent screams against the steel-ribbons,
connected, counter-accepted as able to keep me down.
On the ground, down, down, down.
Taste the cracks in the stone,
taste the mortar, taste the dust,
taste the existence