Skimming along the infinite pavement, held together by yellow stitching, I feel myself start to hydroplane, though my wheels are spinning firmly on the ground.
There is a look-out at the beginning of a gravel road, and I pull in. The marshes are hazy and placid beneath the September morning clouds, and after stretches of cat tails, I see life reflecting on the Columbia.

I turn off the ignition and climb on top of my little Pontiac, cross-legged and shy in my $6.00 trench coat. The breeze is mild but I am shivering from the morning, the life, the love, the overdose of caffeine. I stuff my hands into the coat pockets and search around, nimble-fingered, for the last evidence of this week's addiction. My fingers glide along the wand of nicotina, bring it to my chapped lips, and then spark the black magic. I inhale and exhale just as quickly, letting tiny spirals of chemical cloud escape my lips and spread into the void between my feet and the sky. I tap the remaining amber ashes on my knee and let them smolder into my skin, gasping in memory of the boy.

room 52, 3rd door on the left.

Jack Daniels
makes himself comfortable at my kitchen table.
The telephone cord is wrapping itself
around the tip of my toe,
devouring its prey.
Billie Holliday lulls me from
the record player in the corner.
She is the only woman
who loves me tonight.

In a room below, Melanie paces
in blue socks
around a poem supplied as a good-bye
from a boy who loves her
but every reason he gives of why
they are ment to be together
are the exact reasons
he cannot stay.

On the floor above,
a bohemian waitress and a painter
discuss Picasso
while fucking on the tile floor.
She inspires him, he says.
She contemplates painting her bedroom bright green.

Back in room 52, 3rd door on the left,
Jack Daniels is long gone,
the phone cord is cutting off the circulation
in my big toe,
and the dial tone has been mocking me
for some time now.