The Motel Nymph's Lament

Hazy motel lights like low moons,

a feral peacock’s call,

a neon sign blinked VACANCY in a shade of red

that reminded me of the kind of lipstick that bleeds

when you curse.

The ice machine coughed like the woman in furs,

chain-smoking beside it,

who’s seen too much.

The walls were thin enough to let in

someone else’s heartbreak

and thick enough to keep my thoughts echoing.

Took two Tylenol, didn’t even think,

didn’t take time to feel, either.

The sheets were scratchy,

I tucked myself in like an apology.

Drank from a glass I didn’t wash, forgot to rinse first.

Called no one.

Gideon’s Version had someone else's underlines,

It made me feel less like the first to wander here.

The pages were open to Psalm 88,

which is just another way to say it was too late.

I wrote a poem on the back of a dollar-store receipt with eyeliner.

It almost looked like forgiveness.

(It wasn’t.)

I thought maybe if I slept here,

if I let the TV static whisper me to sleep

with low murmurs drifting from the corridors,

and if I prayed hard enough

to the light above the headboard…

I thought maybe I’d wake up

with new skin.

But in the morning,

the same birds were screaming.

That midsummer haze was burning.

I thought the motel was suspended time.

It was just letting me rot in peace.

I thought coming-of would linger in the anonymity,

the in-between,

Something or other,

the ice machine hum

In the bleach and the dust and the slow ceiling fan.

But I only found silence that looked like grace

and a routine that still held someone else’s shape.

But healing wasn’t here

(God knows I tried.)

Just my name on a bill

and a prayer that disappeared.

And no one gets better where nobody’s been.

That I might forget how long I’d been there.

I thought healing would come like a hymn from the air.

But healing wasn’t here,

That was just the peacocks calling from the hydrangea trees,

the hum of the summer air.

I always say I’ll remember the names

of the places I sleep in.

(I never do.)

They bleed together like mascara in hot rain.

Like old dreams you wake from, crying,

but can’t explain.

Like a saint no one prayed to, misunderstood.

I sleep in rooms that forget me

as soon as I close the door.

Time doesn’t pass in here.

It just drips

like the shower head

three floors up.

I don’t know who I was

in Room 216

or maybe it was 312

either way,

she’s gone.

She always is.