Hotel

by Justin Lowe

irony has left me.
not happiness, but irony.
I am content now, anchored to the sand.

in my dream
I finally tracked her down.
she was lying on a hotel bed,

a double queen with extra pillows,
it smelt fresh,
one of the staff, a pimply boy, came knocking.

her face was awash with rapture.
he was kind,
a hard edge softened by her beauty.

he shook my hand
without trying to place me.
sensed, I think, he didn’t have to,

I bent down and kissed her hand,
the dreamer dreaming,
mumbled something about finding

a woman like her to grow old with,
knowing both things to be impossible,
that she had kept me young too long.

and so and so,
the pimply boy and she and the hotel pillows,
and because

there can be
no tragedy without irony
and so and so,

chocolates on a hotel pillow

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