we make fires out of yesterday's news.

this is a work in progress, with no tribute being payed to JJ.
it needs capital letters, better stanzas, and more regular lines.
but it exists. & so it goes.

the hotel room in the morning

you left early, not even leaving
a footprint in the morning snow,
not even lipstick on your tumbler,
not even a fingerprint on the brass
doorknob. while i slept, you folded
and squared the sheets of my bed,
piled them in some corner of my room
i had forgotten about, placing a sole
mint on top - proof you were here.

i imagine i slept with my eyes half open,
my mouth murmuring protests as you flit
like a moonray in a glass of whiskey, unable
to decide whether to leave a note,
and if you did, if you would perfume it
or kiss it shut. and when you decided,
you ran your hands over your dress,
smoothing the wrinkles my hands left.

housekeeping won't have much to do
once i hand in my keycard. they will dump
the bedroom sheets into a garbage bag
and suture it shut. they will hold lighters
to the metal lamps to erase our fingerprints.
they will affix new mirrors so not even ghosts
linger in this room. short-haired maids take
courses in how to erase someone's presence,
they spend years of their lives dedicated to picking
up other people's rose petals, other people's
mistakes. i turn over and eye the thermostat --
you turned it down to sixty as you left,
trying to create a modern igloo with all
amenities, trying to freeze me out. i hear
the maids rapping their skeleton hands against
the door, asking if anyone is still here,
i pull on pants and button up my shirt half way,
my chest still showing, and as i walk past them, i say
"no, one is there. i don't think anyone ever was."