High-Rise
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I steer a mustard-seed Mini through snowacross the park, near the Conservatory,the glowing flowerbeds erased by white.
Outside a building on Lakeview, I park.The elevator man flings open doorsto a high-ceilinged, eggshell drawing room.
Mrs. Vanderbilt, in silk with beaded florets,sits elegant in a wheelchair while guests—dizzy in gowns, white ties—whirl around her.
The youngest in the room, I greet my parents'long-time friends. An older man, debonair,grazes my wrist, hands me a flute of froth.
I glimpse headlines, spread across a highboy,dated years from now, about this man's wife,his fourth. She outlives him into her nineties.
Across her blouse an antique necklace glints,her husband's photo tucked inside the locket.Her story, I realize, is my obituary.
His jacket sleeve, shiny to touch. The bandrepeats "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" as he swingsus out, pulls close. My stomach drops as if
inside the Otis elevator losingaltitude. He tries to sway me to leavebefore another bell begins to ring. [End Page 243]
ELISE PASCHEN, a member of the Osage nation, is the author of, most recently, The Nightlife (Red Hen Press, 2017). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker and Poetry, among other magazines. She teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
