Gas Station Rest Room

The present tense is the body’s past tense here; hence the ghost sludge of hands on the now gray strip of towel hanging limp from the jammed dispenser; hence the mirror squinting through grime at grime, and the worn- to-a-sliver of soiled soap on the soiled sink. The streaked bowl, the sticky toilet seat, air claustral with stink— all residues and traces of the ancestral spirit of body free of spirit—hence, behind the station, at the back end of the store, hidden away and dimly lit this cramped and solitary carnival inversion—Paul becoming Saul becoming scents anonymous and animal; hence, over the insides of the lockless stall the cave-like scribblings and glyphs declaring unto all who come to it in time: “heaven is here at hand and dark, and hell is odorless; hell is bright and clean.”