Jackson Hotel

Sometimes after hours of wine I can almost see the night gliding in low off the harbor down the long avenues of shop windows past mannequins, perfect in their gestures. I leave some water steaming on the gas ring and sometimes I can slip from my body, almost find the single word to prevent evenings that absolve nothing, a winter lived alone and cold. Rooms where you somehow marry the losses of strangers that tremble on the walls like the hands of the dancer next door, luminous with Methedrine, she taps walls for hours murmuring about the silver she swears lines the building, the hallways where each night drunks stammer their usual rosary until they come to rest beneath the tarnished numbers, the bulbs that star each ceiling. I must tell you I am afraid to sit here losing myself to the hour’s slow erasure until I know myself only by this cold weight, this hand on my lap, palm up. I want to still the dancer’s hands in mine, to talk about forgiveness and what we leave behind—faces and cities, the small emergencies of nights. I say nothing, but leaning on the sill, I watch her leave at that moment when the first taxis start rolling to the lights of Chinatown, powered by sad and human desire. I watch her fade down the street until she’s a smudge, violent in the circle of my breath. A figure so small I could cup her in my hands.