Once Upon a Time Poems

At the Hotel-Room Window

Right when p.m. turns to a.m.
she droops by the hotel room window,
staring at a midnight drizzle
lavish the pavement with pitter patter.

The fragile sleep has deserted her eyelids
like a vaccination that didn’t take.
So she, a crab away from her native shore,
watches the intersection,
moving sideways,
and she shrugs at the flickering lights outside,
and at the sounds of love from the next room;
weak songs of two people
faking for each other’s sake.

Staying on the margin, her favored stand,
she searches through unsorted gaps;
her mind, prowling in the dark,
is a cloud that thunders but cannot rain,
since she let her tears sink inside
to build a wall stone by stone
for a tale that didn’t end well,
or just because
he is part of
nothing
that passes.