Angeline

he had been without her in the empty hotel bed for two nights, two sweating quiet blacknesses, without shuffling or snores, or jittery leg kicking; now all he wanted was for the moon to leave him alone and the neon outside in the street to bury itself in the deathly still of the tree lined park, where the rats and weasels and crazy cats foraged in their merry hunt for things left over, while the night, that trickster of the seasons, rested in his eyes: when he had first visited the city, with its girls and bars and hot, humid evenings he was full: now he heard only the sounds of angry crickets, drowning amid the craters of the dying wounded as he stumbled drunk past the bed, the bath and the TV; would this last patrol always be here?