I came in with the smell of rain and a stranger's cigarette and I thought, finally, a mouth in the wall, a place to slip through. But it caught me. It turned. It fed me into little glass rooms one at a time, spun me a quarter turn, and set me down inside the warm still air like I was something to be portioned out and rationed.
They love it. I watched them lean into the panels with a shoulder, push, walk their slow arc, and step off into the lobby where the air does not move at all, where it just sits, breathed and re-breathed, going nowhere, and they seem glad of it, they loosen their coats and slow their feet like animals who have finally reached the middle of something.
I only wanted to bring them the outside. Wet leaves, the exhaust off the avenue, a little of the cold I'd stolen four blocks north, a woman's perfume I lifted off her scarf without her knowing and would have handed to the next person like a message. The door took none of it. It sealed each of them in a turning cell of yesterday's breath, wiped my hands clean at the threshold, gave me back to the street with nothing.
I lifted the hem of a coat as it spun away from me. I ruffled the back of a neck, once, and the head turned, looking for who had touched it. That was all I got to keep, and I did not keep it.
I was already gone, already three streets over, carrying the perfume I never delivered to a corner where no one was waiting.