they’ve closed our
hotel:
the kitchens are cold;
even
the beds are
celibate.
the mirrors are empty and
the clocks tick through
floors of ice,
mournful as a moth.
once we shared a room there:
we rubbed up
together like scalpels;
the memory slithers into my
mind like a cat’s third
eyelid.
one night I lay awake
next to you
alone, staring out of that
cracked
window. I’d been on the balcony
not long
before, and the whiskered moon,
hanging there
like a phosphorescent pill,
seemed a symbol of our love.

that was the night I left
you;
and all because I couldn’t
bear to see the
moon
through broken
glass.