Penelope
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Walking down a riverbank, Seine or Thames
I stopped to sit in a wrought-iron waffle
chair, the kind that leaves its imprint on your skin.
Soon the waiter answered my hello
with yes. I asked for dark coffee. He brought me instead
an odorless glass of light,
which I promptly spilled all over myself:
an iridescent mess. When I woke up,
the bed’s edge was far from me, a distant
precipice over which I might fall. But
I hauled myself, a small and pulsing thing, a monster,
out from under. I brushed my teeth.
I opened the curtains. I went on waiting.