La Quinta

Fog began the morning,
The sun ate through the gloom like a single hole punch in a piece of card.
No cartoon beams of light.
Past the townhouse, straight to central station,
The first time you were dropped off in your brother's car.
I don't think it's luck that we stayed in touch.

Pale pink petals touch the surface of the pool
And the curves of the contours remind me of your absence
My eyes are bleached.
Strip lighting sparking on and off,
Blinking lashes suspended above.
The cab driver barely resembles his photograph,
Beneath the plastic laminate and its curling edges.
I wonder how else the years have marked him.
This country, it goes on and on.

Certainty comes, however fleeting.
We spent one night in one room.
Put one leg underneath the other.
It'll fall asleep before you do.

You loosen the band and your hair unfolds like flames.
You tie the ribbon to your wrist.
So we stand and stare at the morning rush hour
In a balcony scene.

We were there.
Where was the air?

At toll stations we tossed cents into a plastic catching funnel
that looks like an upturned hockey mask.