We sit in a dark room in an old hotel. Electricity still flickers and water still spurts, but only sporadically. Everyone keeps to their rooms. It is safer not to know, less arguments that way. If the glass was not so smudged with dirt, we could look out the window, but we probably would not out of fear. The desk does not take messages, not that anyone is calling. Rent is extracted, of course, for the bed each month on the third automatically. Except for the police, who don’t know what to do, the streets are empty. They wait impatiently, but police are uncomfortable waiting. They tap their truncheons on their dark boots and look with lust toward the hotel’s once elegant entrance.
(August 31, 2026)
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