I have this small room by four wires, and inside the room I have six people, and inside the people I have their blood, which wants to come down to me and mostly does. I hold the wires. I hold the counterweight sliding the other way to make my work gentle for them.
I hold the cables, the doors, the little emergency telephone no one has ever used. I hold the coffee in the paper cup, level, though the woman still steadies it against her chest as if I might forget.
They stand very close together and pretend they are alone. They watch the numbers climb. I am doing the climbing; they are only along for it, which is the arrangement I have with all of them, everywhere, always.
The man in the corner is thinking about something he called, this morning, a heavy week. I checked him when he stepped in. He weighs what he weighed on Monday. Nothing has been added. And yet he leans on the rail with his whole spine, he presses his back to the wall, he lets the wall take him, and I take the wall, and I take the whole shaft down through forty floors of held stone into the ground I never leave.
Whatever is on him does not register on me. I would carry it if it did. I carry the rest.
The doors open. They walk out onto a floor I am also holding, and forget the room, and forget the wires.
That is fine. They were never meant to think about me.
I only wanted to say, in case no one has: the whole time you were rising, and the whole time you felt yourself sinking, I had you.
I always have you.