Edited by: Shivani Panigrahy
I can reasonably infer from the lack of conversation in this sturdy metal box that you call a lift and I call home, that the five of you have never met.
One has her thoughts wrapped menacingly around a line of tangles caught in her earphones and one stares coldly into oblivion, perhaps overtaken by some midday thought, like what might be served at dinner.
You, yes you, the boy slouching in the corner. Why so glum today? Just last night, I heard you raving ecstatically about that A you received on the final that you “burned the midnight oil for”. And all of today, in the blink of an eye, your heart looks like it’s been burned.
Ah! I was hoping you’d be the fourth in this elevator. The girl in the patchwork denim. Arms overflowing with scraps of last year’s “abnormal psychology” notes and the other holding on to a boy who just doesn’t deserve her. I was hoping you’d have called it quits by now. How my quaint body aches to convey how much you’re truly worth. You fascinate me, patchwork denim.
Over to the undeserving fellow. Does she know about last Thursday’s rendezvous? The crimson lipstick stains marking circles around your collar are a fine mismatch for the vermillion gloss that she’s known for. If only these walls could talk.
As we ascend from ground to first, terror envelops this terribly tiny room we find ourselves assembled in, on this mundane Wednesday afternoon.
Someone …. has called the lift …. to the first floor. And unironically proceeded with the audacity to press “2” upon entering. Dare I say, “Don’t push my buttons.”
Slowly our party of five morphs into seven as we are welcomed with two new additions. One is a face I see pretty frequently, a face of concern at all times; a barely sipped macchiato in hand marked with nude lipstick and a body hiding behind that one corduroy jacket, colored with the hues of last winter. Over to the other, her friend, perhaps, with whom I have a bone to pick.
Indecision is a common theme floating around this tiny campus that we know so well and is one so deeply projected by this 6-foot-something with tattoos all over and an oh-so painfully positioned piercing.
He presses “2” but means to click “3”, yet gets off at “4.” If my pet peeve had a face, it would be his.
As ascension brings us from level two to four, a thought crosses my mind; one laced with a mildly humanitarian belief. This tiny microcosm we know formally as the elevator is really the representation of diversity. After leading the day as a 21-year-old ASP devoid of placement offers and not a care in the world for a main gate infraction, he finds himself wound up next to a wide-eyed freshman with passion in her veins and brochures in her hands. An enervated professor, weary of grading needlessly lengthy papers on the Anthropocene, and a sophomore who just wants to make it through the day. A failing situationship fraying at the seams, righting their wrongs with hopes to start afresh, caught with a perfectly intact freshman trio that has no idea what’s about to hit them.
Just for a moment, every few moments, a bunch of strangers occupy the same space, mingling silently, differences fleeting away, realizing the common essence of humans and the desire to just make it to tomorrow. All for just a moment.
With each rise and fall of the elevator, each varying individual, with their myriad of struggles and mountains of stories, for those brief 30 seconds, form an ephemeral tapestry of humanity.