haibun for woman/alone/in a motel that pings
My Viking knife cuts into my palm, as my other hand fiddles with chains. I’d pulled the blade
from my purse in a panic. Now embarrassed, I press the wound until certain I don’t need stitches,
but I should have known when my beads broke as soon as I crossed the border, when they
plunged reckless from my neck in a nervous tug, that same dread when caught in the riptide a
week before with my son, and now in the motel booked in the setting day, no, I cannot deny it:
something rattles about this place, and there is hurried research for murders, tragedies, some
newsworthy reason that I should be far away from Room 208. I find nothing, but I blow one
hundred dollars to be as many miles away to slip into Room 802, arbitrary, reverse sanctuary, but
knowing somehow
I missed somebody’s set path,
broke away from a timeline
that was slowly gaining strength.