A Secret Passage
       

The senators hear a murmur in the distance. It could be just the pulse in the ear canal. Or the whoosh of the air supply. But now it's loud. Gunfire. Glass breaking. Oak panels shattering. The air is poison. The senators hear their own names, drag her out, hang him. They rip off their lapel pins, pocket them, think twice, empty their pockets. The walls are beginning to tremble. But they are ushered out. By a hidden staircase, that no one ever knew existed. No one knows it now. No floor plan, no architectural drawing shall ever disclose it.

My love, it's the same stairs you discovered in childhood, in the old dream, when you first heard the voice, intimate and hoarse, your name was humiliated on a stranger's lips, and the doorknob began to turn.

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Copyright © 2021 D. Nurkse All rights reserved
from The Manhattan Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission