My ears pop
as I climb your stairs,
steal breath
with a cat
halfway home,
get dizzy
and skeletal,
queasy hungry,
reminding myself
to not look up
or down,
count the steps,
breathe the breaths,
hypnotic hope,
tendons tending
over thresholds
to temples,
hands to heads,
to take trash
and bills
back down,
heels and rails,
bend my
spine,
stoop
again to earth.