Hotel Room #1 Poem by Brevet Wilson

The police are raiding the hotel room next door.
A lot of shouting and flashing lights.
Lights that play optical illusions with her naked body.

She turns over in bed to face me and ask
'Why do we think so differently at night'.
I think I know
but I tell her I don't.

She lays back on her back and lights a cigarette
her naked body
a flash of white
then back to red/ blue/ red/ blue.

More screaming and yelling from next door
which feels like a world away.
A sudden thud against the wall.

She still lies half covered by a cheap comforter,
as if nothing is happening.
Places like this it's best not to look out the window
it's best to mind your own god damn business.

There is hysterical crying through the wall
and she bends her leg under the covers.

She smokes her cigarette as I smoke mine.
'Sometimes' she says, ignoring the wailing woman next door, 'I feel like I am dead inside and I am trying to shock myself back to life'.

She tells me she wants to play connect the dots with all my scars, just to see what it will loook like.
I tell her 'It will look like me'. I say.

She is long
languid
and every movement and word are like fluids that have been made viscous by the cold.

I peek out the window and a man is being taken away in cuffs.
a woman still cryinf through the wall.
the siren lights stop and the room goes black
except for the glow of her cigarette
which, after a moment of silence she extiguishes.
then it's just black.