scroll · each level is a small room
a landing. you can still hear the surface, if you concentrate.
the air begins to thicken. a faint smell of old paper.
a window onto rock.
a vending machine, empty, with one bulb still alight.
a long table. several chairs. no one has sat in them for years.
a corridor branches off toward memory. you keep descending.
someone has chalked a name on the wall. it is almost yours.
the stairwell tightens. trapped is on this floor, somewhere.
water in the cracks of the stair. it has been here a long time.
the bulb fails. you continue by hand on the wall.
the wall ends. the stair continues into a wider space.
you have descended further than the building is tall.
it is here that the stair forgets it is a stair.
a faint glow from below, no moon could account for.
no further numbers.
·
you arrive — at the bottom of the page.