You Leave the Hotel for LaGuardia

by Montgomery Maxton

At 4AM you leave the hotel for LaGauardia and I, barely awake, sit up in the king size bed to watch you: you dress in your business clothes because you'll make work when you land; a same-ole-day in the office after waking a world away from a night unlike any other. You pack your suitcase with haste, rolling bags of souvenirs and stuffing them into pockets. You won't turn the light on, but I can still see you smiling from the sex; from this rendezvous weekend. Outside the window, the curtains pulled aside on their tracks, the city skyline is still a boxy shadow with random square lights. Everyone thinks they know how this is going to end. Of course you'll kiss me goodbye, telling me to enjoy the hotel room and I'll say it won't be the same without you, but then there is what will happen after the hotel room, how we only have two more nights together before, like it always happens, the plane drops out of the sky and ashes go to ashes and dust goes to dust.

6S

Montgomery Maxton, author of Hotel Fire, is a poet, writer, and photographer whose work has been published in National Geographic. He can be found on his blog.