(True) Love in an Elevator

When the elevator malfunctioned
we went from strangers to friends
to casual dating but eventually
could deny our love no more than a bird
its song, and in those cramped quarters
we saw our kids off to college, watched
our 401k ebb and flow with the slow
motion histrionics of a glacier’s migration,
and when our cancers metastasized
we leapt hand in hand down the shaft,
too old and in love for frivolous chemo,
plunging to the floor where we first met.

Matthew’s poetry was featured in The Best American Poetry 2007, and his chapbook, “Silent Partner,” won the 2013 Sow’s Ear Press Chapbook Award. He received an MFA in poetry from the University of Montana in 1999 and now works as an insurance consultant in Chicago.