Sunday Morning Motel, Oregon Coast

My mem­ory is a wreck, like my hair the morn­ing after yesterday.

Cracker col­ored light wades through the thick cur­tains; shrap­nel shards

of it on the floor, strewn like high­lights cut from a beauty school mistake.

I am rolling away from it: mem­ory, yesterday’s tomor­row, the light. I am tucking

the badly used motel foam pil­low between my knees, hug­ging my elbows. I am ignoring

my thirst, the clock, the tight­ness coiled like a spring in my heart, the tightness

that keeps it beat­ing only half way, a tick with­out the tock,

a metronome stuck on the downbeat.

I only sleep a lit­tle these days and my dreams are short, shocked trailers.

Their story lines have no arc. They move from a to b along a brief line and

they leave no myths, no lessons in their wakes. The cast is a bored crew of wraiths,

same as today’s yesterday’s night.

My eyes are blurry. The lack of focus feels like com­fort, like what comfort

might feel like. Like my imag­i­na­tion of that.

The 50/50 sheets crackle. These sheets don’t rus­tle. More like a fire’s crackle

and less like a wind’s rus­tle. Mer­ci­fully I feel the mangy bed­spread is just about

off the end of the bed. The alarm blinks at me, and in me, the alarm blinks.

And then your arm…

along the back of my head, through my hair, your fingers.

I remem­ber the time, it was 3am, we made it to an awk­ward forgiveness

before we passed out.

I am feel­ing for you across the empty space I wake up with. I am feel­ing for you

behind me on a soggy Sun­day morn­ing, feel­ing for you in my dis­jointed awakening.

Feel­ing you touch me, imper­fect, awak­en­ing tired, both of us still half mad, still bruised.

Feel­ing you turn me, turn to me, hold me.