wandering

I forget where I am, sometimes, around 4:00 in the morning,

the similarities of silence, the geometry

of my bedroom, after room, after room,

impartially decorated in someone else's tastes,

in which only the inconsequential differs.

I close my eyes, and something crackles in my head.

the air is different, of course:

I orient myself by the soup dripping off my skin in the south,

considering the white-lined cracking of my hands in the north.

but the way the smell of the ocean insinuates itself through the window,

carrying the sweet salt wash, the mathematics of the breaking waves;

jasmine and honeysuckle drifting, dancing across the yard,

and I taste the tang of salt, licking it off chapped lips.

yet I still forget where I am, sometimes,

where the bathroom is,

which way is east. I wonder, someday,

if there will be room for me.