I guess there is ecstasy here. The rhythmic hammers echoing through slick marble and tall ceilings. The song of men thumping their feet all the way up. On the rooftop garden, a fire once blackened and charred. My God, how did they ever get out. If I cup my hands over my ears, curl into myself on the couch, I can hear hummingbirds peck against my forehead. Here’s a kind of melody: loud rhythmic breathing, flakes of ash darkening the snowfall. Bibi tells me we have to keep the quiet, so there is no showering past ten, and since the hammers are phantom beats now, we trust ritual, and lay a towel against the bedpan-shower-floor. Muffle the shattering. We do the same to loud, angry voices in the night, thrown into this little apartment like cigarette smoke, the little bugs that spot the light fixtures, quiets the way a half-open door and youth used to. Sometimes, we forget you’re a child. But size alone should tell, hands smaller, less intent. How they danced happily into oblivion, oblivious to the hammer that pounds a rhythm into us all. But I guess there is ecstasy wherein the hammer falls. This place is for the birds. Where I can throw up my hands and dance, my mouth opened impossibly wide, filled with darkened floorboards, charred nails, a broken elevator that forces us close. I can ask for it to stop, loudly, and bang my arms against the wall—adjoin myself to the mounting rhythm.
