More Fun in the New World

I lied about the shortcut, the high road,
all of it. Steered through the same recreational districts
dry-eyed and frostbit, as if on rails, and pulled up
just like that. Eight yards to the motel office, one more
to ring the bell. The ice machine means well, a grey slab
I attend with my bucket. I've been here before,
paced it off and slept beneath a sheet
forty feet from the highway. Darling,
they're tearing up the highway. When I said so long
I meant that I don't understand modern manners or the solar system
or anything. That a crucial lesson
didn't take. The new math ruined a generation. Just look
what we count on: blink of binary
operations. On check-in I find hair in the drain, a ring
by the phone, as though I'm late. Too late. At check-out
I buy more time for the purpose of making suspiciously
little noise, unable to believe a mid-sized Canadian airport
the last place I will ever see you. Come back. I'm low
on cash, downgrading, looking
at what poverty means to show me. This bed,
burned by cigarettes. The chair beside it.