Burned out, abandoned with warnings that exhale
on the stern facade. One letter per pane, tagger’s red
paint spells it out for me:

E L E V A T O R
S H A F T
D O N O T
E N T E R           Never        mind

the barbed wire fence, I
wasn’t planning to make that leap. The clock
on that shuttered Romanian community center across

the street reminds me
it’s 5:45 pm
same as last fall and the visit before that. Still there will be
more stairs to climb.