GRIEF AS SPACE MOUNTAIN
by Kaitlin Tan
Lights on, you are steel support beams and a sturdy track
leading us, in swoops and spirals, to one simple end.
Lights off, you turn this cavernous hall into outer space
full of slow ascents and sudden plummets; other carts visible
in glimpses, other passengers known only in clipped scream.
You illusion of airless antigravity. You warehouse
rave strobes, baiting our senses.
This is how you catch us — alone in such thick dark
that we begin to fear the improbable: a slip from our seatbelts,
a spin off the tracks, no steel at the next drop to catch our fall.