New Mexico Mercury

Sometimes—like right now—when you
need to see yourself from
outside, so you can say, objectively, how it
really feels in there,

your mind is a translucent sheet of plastic
taped on to the hotel room window in a
ragged part of town
that looks over a parking lot, a late night

laundromat across the street, where you
hope a woman will pull up, carry in
a plastic bassinet of laundry to wash,
and sit down waiting with a cigarette.

Under the right conditions, you would
walk over and go talk with
such a woman,
in such a way that she would, also,
enjoy sharing talk with you.

And you would taste the details of each other’s
travels, finding parallels, learning
of the individual winding ways that led,
eventually, to where you
find yourselves—
an empty laundromat,
tonight.