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NARRATIVE 5

Your paperback of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

was ruined when it sank into the motel bathtub,

fat and seeping when you plucked it back.  Outside,

there were old people screaming for the bus

or playing games of chance with bits of bones

they’d scooped from the roadkill by the curb.

You were waiting for darkness.  So were they.

The bus never came.  You suspected

there was no bus.  On dried-up stationery,

you drew a picture of a square

with knobby wheels and a few windows.

Stick people stared out them, at the ceaseless road.

At you, you thought.  You drew a fat mark

through them, canceling whatever

they had hoped for, and tied it to the soggy book.

You threw it out the motel door,

praying they’d shut up or scatter.

Or go to sleep.  No one noticed

and all night long the hiss of oxygen tanks

and the electric clack of wheelchairs

and the chirping alarms of all the world’s congestive failures

were at your door.  You missed

the book you’d lifted from a library

in the next town over.  Why

you had picked it made no sense.

Everything was pitiable.  Above the bed

the room’s sallow light hummed

and wouldn’t shut off.  The mattress felt like straw.

You figured it would not be long

before you found work again

in a mine or as a museum docent.

Whatever that meant.  Docent.  You liked the word

like the matches you kept

in your pocket like identification.

There was more to your story,

you always said if you were asked.

You rarely were.