This Morning

“I’m always naked," the Finnish one giggles as she hunches over and grabs her clothes, shimmying backwards into the bathroom,
her breasts dangling like a pair of gourds,
eyes are set far apart and
a smile that seems to be spilling teeth.

A lively crew in the flat this morning.
The parlor smells of tobacco and
the humid odor of last night’s revelry.

The dog is nervous
nips at the Finnish girl’s elbow
as she tries to button my pants.

The Hungarian girl is quiet.
She sits sipping coffee,
and pipes up only when
she thinks the boys aren’t listening.

While Chandler was opening the windows, she declares, "You can only relax when you are stink. I am stink now," and then she threw the covers up over her head.

Chandler rolls up the window slats and
a breeze billows the lace curtains.
He’s ready to burst into the city
needled by preconceived notions of what today should be,
and he will chase those notions.

A faucet turns on, hisses, and then stops.

Silence, a moment.

A child’s cry of glee rises up,
four stories on the breeze.
Maybe for that child today will be perfect.
The sort of day that years later will be an emblem of his childhood. That one day.

I have those memories. Mine have water and grass,
a parade of clouds, repetitive and white,
that cast shadows only in quick flashes.

Sailboats slide by on the horizon
like thorns on the stem of a rose.

The sloop disappears in a mirage on the Chesapeake,
replaced by an orange Volkswagen van
chugging across the bridge, miles above.

(It could have been miles, to a ten-year-old looking up from the deck of a vanishing catamaran.)

Another faucet hisses and falls silent.
I give cheek kisses to the Hungarian woman
and said, "nice to have met you."

The commotion of their departure revives my headache, nestled in my temples, like a summertime insect singing for a mate.

The wave of the morning episode disappears in the bewilderment of my splitting head, receding from the sandcastle just dissolved.

Tears collect in the corners of my eyes, and if our houseguests suddenly returned they may think I am writing about some tragic turn, a lost friend,
or about love.