Tell me again about the hotel,
where the sun pearls through

dirty windows onto our backs. I
turned off the TV. I looked inside

the empty mini-fridge, the
closet with an empty iron and a hefty

safe. I had a dream that
two out of six elevators were broken,

Dear red bell, does it scare you,
existing for emergency?

Look—there's a smudge on the
glass, which proves how careless

the staff are. We wanted to be artists,
so we took the right turn out of the hotel

onto the highway and watched cars create
blood out of nothing. Watch—the road markings

rimmed in red. Nothing is sacred in a hotel:
even the Bible in the nightstand is smeared

with neglect. Hotels regulate the custom
of forgetting: my odor, my abandoned shoes,

my memories. All escorted out the key-card-
guarded door. My lover says he still loves me

but I close the door on a stranger so I wouldn't
have to reciprocate. One a check-out day, I cry through

the bathroom, leaving tears draped like towels
for the staff to erase. Uninterested in consequences.

I watch the rapid glimmer of the coast, wondering
how far I could go before I forced myself to retreat.

Smell the powdered eggs burning
in the metal trays. It is time, it is time. I re-fuse

the entangled wires of my life, refuse the continental
breakfast, refuse your apology for breaking my life

in two, one half still at the hotel,
the other existing solely for emergency.