All Hotel Rooms Look The Same These Days

When the curtains are closed,

there was no light,

and he liked it like that,

because he never liked himself,

so he loved me in the dark.

I fumbled in the dark,

trying to find the jug of juice we left on the desk,

beside my tarot cards,

and hundreds of pages of

“Please let this work out. Please let this work out. Please let this work out.”

It didn’t.

I dare not drink the same juice,

switching to other brands,

watching my shaking hands suddenly subside as I arrive in the next aisle,

where the juice is different,

and I am not haunted by the thing I stupidly associated with him.

I stayed at another hotel recently,

because as is often the case,

things didn’t work out,

and I wailed by myself,

on the bathroom floor,

because the room layout was the same,

the curtains carried the same darkness,

but the man I gave my heart (and orange juice, and cherry bakewells) to, couldn’t be found.

I was in the dark,

desperately wanting a love that would have killed me,

a love that would have left me looking over my shoulder,

dreading the night,

when the darkness deemed it the right time for a reel of endless nightmares,

reminders that a second chance won’t magically materialise a new life,

where all the paranoid problems of the past have vanished.

I slept,

eventually,

but the room was haunted,

by our three day palace,

and the way it collapsed the second I turned my back.