First Night in the Hotel of My Soul

1.
In your apartment, the mountain abbey, I woke up slower.
I recovered, took the waters. Unwanted madman strolling
in my robe across your perfumed spaces. I dreamt our life
together, diseased mind, behind these curtainless windows.

A dog’s bark genuinely distributes some restless energy.

Naked body extends across the bed where you are not, left
alone for the weekend with your undivided, singular things.
Makeups waiting for your skin to complete their symmetry.
Dresses bought before we met pushed in the closet’s back
memory of sheer cobwebs. On the flat burner, a single pan  
without intention or taste or timing. Your pastel cup at my
surreptitious table. And, my hand is on the sink, my heart,

to think, I once wanted the rest that comes from loneliness,

a hermit’s simple joy. No ballast, no future, no consequence.

2.

Heartache tomato sauce chilling in the fridge door or rice
bagged on a shelf for a year or two, unused. Put a bowl atop
the kitchen counter, your phone playing music inside, old
romantic rock from another era invoking nothing more in you
than an odd grimace. Let’s stay in tonight. Our last meal,
lamb kofta and two buck wine, I couldn’t have known then.
Why didn’t I sit next to you? Across from you, book in lap.
Unnecessary conversation, unaware of the rate at which it
unspooled. I don’t believe I’ve put a thing to my mouth since
without it turning to mud cake. I’ve said maybe two things
worth saving. A dry ash cough. A swallow sound like floor
board creaks. I remember being home before you, looking
at spiral folds of our pleasant, unmade bed, pillow & sheet

mandalas promising we had been here, once, and would return.

3.

Asleep and unshaven, I kick and curl and open like a mariner    

rising in a malignant darkness. The spines of books I finger

on your shelf and think to ask about each one. Why, each one?

The light trace of your even handwriting, on notes to-do

and directions on how best to maintain - - I want to read, but

will only misapprehend. I misapprehend everything. Think

to ask you this or that next I see you. Pieces of broken wood,

pieces of unmade furniture, abandoned buildings, planks

and paint, canvas, dust and shoes, used shirts and bras, plate

sculptures and paper and the same loose strands of hairs,

yours and mine, intermingling over everything in the heavy

carpet fibers and beneath the cushions. And the dog’s, too.

What if we needed to leave all this and start in a Spartan

direction where we have to be patterned, disciplined, adult.

4.

Luck, like the kid that acts sick to skip school that day. Or,

a vacation extended. The mailman coming up the stoop,
neighbors driving in after a late night. The day’s goings-on

we never see while tending to our impressive mathematics.
How natural light cooed that old apartment. Living room  
windows, looking up, beneath branches of flowering trees.
The dog paces from couch to carpet to bowl then back to me.
I’m a child in my grandmother’s bed. I hear her percolating
coffee. She changes the towel on my forehead. On the phone,
now, with her sisters, over the television’s novelas. Doppler
from faroff lawnmowers, a car or truck’s takeoff. Sunlight
travels the room. Our life’s exhibits, in gratifying silence.
Time for one f*****g stroll? No, run through the monument!
Take in what we can, strategically. In case we never return.

5.

Empty picture frames emit a sort of gravity. The furniture’s

wobbly arrangement. Shacked up for the night as a guest

I loafe, I stretch. In and out each direction at the same rate.

Feeling temporarily indecent behind your shower curtain,
I dry off in the dark. Benevolent, I rearrange your closet,

collect your tan heels and blue tennis shoes, re-sort the basket.

I ignore your drawers of undergarments, ignore the bright
flags you tossed and waved to signal other men. I try to keep

the white fabric of the loveseat the dog rests her toes in clean.

On top of everything else, entropy. At any given time one of us

rather be somewhere else, with someone else. I put my feet

atop the coffee table you painted bright pink. I contemplate how
to best position myself if you walk through the door right now.

Or, If your life might open to intervene on mine ever again.

Reviews

[roarke]

Great title. Ya had me at that. but then the images and emotions just kept pouring forth. Very good stuff.