We've been in several sleeping places.
Hotel rooms, apartelles, condotels,
cheap, dilapidated motels.
Would often wonder
who were the last occupants before we came.
Were they a couple?
A paid ******* and her customer?
(or maybe it's the other pronoun)
Two friends, lonely
and sexually craving for a warm body,
any familiar body?
(at the risk of being strangers the morning after)

Some rooms we've been in reeked
of loneliness and secrecy.
Some had crisp, clean sheets,
all traces of body fluids
laundered and bleached.
Ready to absorb our own.

I look at the walls.
Plastered white.
Crumbling green.
Peeling beige.

How many moans of pleasure
(faked or authentic) tried to seep into them
against the solid cement  towards another room?
Were they all moans, those sounds?
What if some were howling,
of force, of "first-time" pains,
of lost virginities?

The creaking of bed posts is the musical score of a three-hour narrative.

could be longer, could be shorter. Only
they can tell. There could be
cuddling (if they are lucky)
or turned backs (if they are ******).
Worse,
one could be sobbing.
Soundless, inconspicuous sobs
even the body beside her
cannot hear.