secret motel

1. I follow a trail of teeth to the lighthouse. Where there is no light. And I am far from home. I keep time with the metallic drip of rust water. A rotary-dial telephone rings at 3am. My dead father calling to reminisce about paper routes and bowling alleys. I want to tell him I love him. But my voice slows into an eternity of cafeteria windows, a graveyard shift of fluorescent light swallowed by a darkness that always was and always will be.

2. I wake up in the wee-hour darkness of morning to climb through fog to the secret yoga studio on the mountain. I hide in the bushes and peer through the window at the pretty ladies bending and stretching. All those tight pants and bare feet. I love jacking off to them. Until a white light fills my head. And my nerves are scattered.

3. I research a desert. An afternoon in desert. I name my dead twin Los Alamos. Saucers in the sky. I search for my father's name in the abandoned airbase. I search for God in the early morning aisles of 7Eleven. A hot cup of coffee, a Philip K. Dick novel, empty space around the Ferry Building. This patch of sunlight as a place of removal and transport.

4. I am always alone and have no friends. This is okay. I don't care to try anymore. Good-bye, R. Good-bye, IL. They won't know or care when I'm done. This, too, is fine. A life of entries and exits. The most significant will never know how significant they were.

5. A record playing. A drink on the table. My hair greyed out like an afternoon in winter. I treasure the silence of hallways, working in an empty office when everyone is gone to holiday. I push the call button for the service elevator. I wait and wait. I don't mind this little bit of forever.