We meet so high up our accompanists are planes. From the observation deck, we watch them spiral in both directions with lighted wing tips, pink and green, port and starboard. Since there is nothing to say there is nothing we say.

In Manhattan, stairwells are bridges. You can ascend and descend with one hand always on the wall. You may. You can watch your shoes the whole way down, canvas shoes, if you will, in pink and green.

Each month means a higher floor and a narrower tower. By year's end we face each other across the circular inner railing, on a reverse crow's nest with hardly a place to stand. The wind speaks between us, and the planes, in long orbits.

Were there tape or cards to punch, I would punch them, slip them into boxes of saltines. Were there cartridges to load, were there turntables, to splice the conduits with a monophonic earphone might make the broadcast. Instead there's a tapping that announces some kind of labor or a push toward survival. I will wrap it with meaning made of brown paper, and make a packet for hiding in the drawer.

The antenna is sharp, and surely is piercing. Piercing—it will be my hand, or it will be yours.

—for Miranda Gaw