The elevator has been dead for a week

The elevator has been dead for a week.

I take the stairs, one landing at a time,

and on the third floor, the joint begins to talk.

It’s a wet, rhythmic click

that sounds like a clock made of gristle.

A souvenir from the night shift in 2014,

stacking crates of heavy engine parts

on a floor that didn’t give.

Now the lobby is drafty and the scar

along my inner bone turns a bruised, bright purple.