1

You will avoid overcomplimenting. Stick to phrases
eeked of desire—smart blouse, handsome family.

You will find a chair. Tilt your head until you've
found the ceiling. Let discomfort loom. Let her speak.

Don't respond right away. Make her second guess her words.
Let her try to ramble out of it on a macro level. Let her dwell
on the micro miscalculations in silence.

Give it some time. Respond.
But calibrate. Be indirect, detached. "I'm here, aren't I?"

2

Don't encourage sentimentality or nostalgia.

When she brings up the early days—and she'll bring up the early days—remind her of your many failures in kindness.

The time she called from the psych ward and you told her you were busy should work. Or when you made her walk home after
the big fight. Or when you introduced her as a friend.

3

Here, she'll take your hand and guide it along her soft features.

Oblige.

Focus on the way you take her in. Give her a jagged gaze.
Don't relent.

Undress yourself. Do this without intro or segue or ceremony.

Comment on her alkaline and citrus taste. Drift five feet above yourself and watch it happen.

4

Laying tangled in the aftermath of blankets and sheets, ask her
about her husband.

Ask her about her drinking.

Ask her about her son's new school.

Ask her about her prescriptions, the side effects.

5

Take the long way home. Grab the brown belt to go with the brown shoes. Drink water. Lots of water. Eggs, not cereal.

Show up early to work. Appear eager and sincere in your every
task.

Blend.

Find the muck, I do;
pull my shoes off, I do.
I feel it, the muck,
tethering and I feel
competition pulsating.
Competition against what?
Against the water that surrounds,
I guess;
Against the mud between my toes,
I guess.
I missile off it, the ocean floor,
careening upward, and I missile
the bright fishes in my wake.
My wake?
I attended it, you could say;
I got over it, you could say.
And I could stop here, the surface,
floating face down.
But what of the alternative?
An appetite for oxygen, I have;
a heavenly itch, I have.
A skyward geyser, I could be;
a bolt of lightning in reverse, stand back, see.

Now, underwater, sound turns itself
inside out. I aim myself
toward the floor of the pool
but my pruned hands never
find it. Down down down.
Deep water. As quickly
as fear arrives, it's traded
for confusion; confusion,
for abandon; abandon, for peace.
Down here, I barely am.
The weight of my body erodes.
Watch me stingray. Watch me dolphin.
Watch me ball up into stone.
Watch me sink.
Listen for my whale song.
Wait for me to geyser.

Shirtless and floating in the hotel pool,
staring at the hotel ceiling.
I'm waiting.

A permanent pace and temperature hold here.
The desk clerk tip-toes into the room on occasion,
up to the ladder, and whispers, as if she might wake me,
"Are you sure you still don't need anything?"

It's 11 p.m. The pool closed at 10.

I raise a hand and she tip-toes back to the desk.

I'm waiting. I'm floating on my back. The ceiling
is ornate, beautiful. Flourishes interlock and repeat.

I haven't said a word in three days. The first day
was unintentional and only realized as I crawled into
bed. The second day came easy, felt meditative. Now
my silence is another obligation.

I used to feel sorry for myself. On a different occasion,
I lived with such reckless intensity.

Now, I'm trying to raise my credit score.

I want to trace the ceiling. I'm shirtless, floating, waiting.
I'm on my back.

I imagine this is what god must feel like,
this removed, this gone, a spectator, impotent
and waiting.

I bring my shoulder blades in and sink. I'm underwater.
I'm underwater and the ceiling distorts. I'm underwater
and the desk clerk is nowhere to be found. I'm underwater,
shirtless, staring, waiting.

Zigzag the stitch
and rub a little jelly

rickshaw fresh
mama to baby

turnstile linen and
swaddle

good times
soon to follow

simulcast the
charged circumstance

mother, verdant
mother, vessel
mother, hollow

forecast past
the sleepless
and bloodless

fixate on
first steps, first days,
first sorrows

dumbfounded fully
by where it all started

adulthood summoned
by a little ****** and folly.

In Room 204 of the Lancaster Motel,
I ease myself into the bath.
Music plays. It's the kind
of pan flute and finger-picked
guitar tune you hear over fuzzed out speakers
in grocery stores. I don't know the source.
The place smells of mildew
and cheap coffee and self pleasure
and Febreeze. I'm tired.
More tired than I've ever been, I think.
Do I still have a job? Until I call in to check, I suppose.
And I suppose this pocket knife will have to do.
I never seem to have a corkscrew on hand when
my mood calls for wine. I stab and jimmy the cork
until I can pry it loose with my teeth. A few
bits of cork float on the surface of the wine.
This does not stop me, nor slow me.
Pollyanna and I stayed in 206,
a detail that calls attention to itself, a detail that
longs for a poetic phrase,
yet I feel little other than the
dull thud of coincidence.
I remember asking her
before that first time if
she thought of *** as
a form or erasure or
addition. She said
both sounded nice.
And something
in the way she said nice,
led me to believe
she landed on an unspoken
third option.  I no
longer had an appetite for *** that evening,
but we acted on it to satisfy expectation.
She turned down the air conditioner,
and we laid there shivering and saying little.
She told me not to leave her.
I said I wouldn't.
I'm in the tub now and the bottle is almost empty
and all of this is so selfish and stupid
and I'm just doing it for the sake of habit
and sad sack poetry and ultimately
an "I-Eat-*****" consolation fedora in heaven. And I'm
self aware but the trajectory spirals against my will.
And my life entire burns a little slapstick,
so I get outside of myself--watch, enjoy.

It's a cool Monday, October, and I want to send you a *****
little text for old times' sake;
summon you with a spring of the finger,
an autumn of the tongue.
Shake me, will you? Center me back. Flay me on the table.
The life domestic's got me blue again.
Where there's a will, there's a hotel room;
where there's a hex, there's an incantation.
Spill, fantasy. Melt the collar. Drift the tide.
This fix is temporary; this fix is inadequate;
this fix isn't much as far as fixes go.
Cuff me anyways. We'll figure the
rest in the morning.