Leaving Tennessee

Time is vertical in motels, it travels red-eyed in elevators. It’s an out of sequence conversation you have with an ice bucket. Barefoot hours drop their hairballs into air-ducts, spindrifts of sweat drift unfiltered. Morning lifts ears first, they open eyes in your mind. Early risers thump down hallways, trundling wheels pulled by heavy hands. Perched on a sagging bed, one sock in hand, drinking sour wine from a plastic cup, you roll underwear into a ball packing lost hours away into a small suitcase. You wonder how to leave this town, how to check out of this wrinkled room with the same face you came with?