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The Boy In The Elevator
by Nancy Ava Miller

At Holy Cross Hospital
when my father died,
I walked those gleaming nighttime corridors
a line-up of elevator doors.
motorcycle boots clomped hard
on solid floors resembling marble—
smooth and cold.
A boy stood waiting for a ride up.
He could have been James Dean 16 years old:
      hair the color of plywood
      eyes shadowed by the intensity of adolescence
      his lips made plump by some rush of blood,
            it seemed.
He wore jogging shoes and jeans
and ignored his Mom and Dad near-by
beneath the mezzanine.

One night at Holy Cross Hospital
      —in my high black boots with buckles
      (boots that shined almost as bright
            as those cheerless corridors);
In my crew cut hair
      so people mistook me for a man or a dyke;
      With bandannas and scarves tied about my head
            and waist
      and a row of piercings along one ear—
At Holy Cross Hospital one November
about the time my father died,
I did not appear somber
except—if one gazed closely—
around the mouth (which trembled)
and eyes, for recently I’d cried.

The boy watched me approach,
both of us bathed in icy fluorescence.
And then the elevator doors gasped open.
We shuffled inside—
Father, mother, son and me—
but no one smiled for that brief ride.

He scanned me from a foot away—
      the chains upon my belt loop,
      a leather strap around my wrist.
I touched a kerchief to my eye
and the boy asked, “Are you crying?”
“Just mascara,” I replied.
The elevator cable groaned.
Forever I regret that lie.

I should have whispered
“My father is dying,”
and trapped that blond boy in my arms
for some eternal elevator ride.
I should have shown him I was crying,
pressed our wet cheeks side by side,
breathing sweat from off his neck.
I could have made him kneel there,
his face pushed tight against my thigh,
and told that boy that he was mine
on the night my father died,
In Holy Cross,
Intensive Care.