The TV that had been left on was playing a commercial
full of beaches, bikinis, and sun when she peeled off
the condom someone had thrown at the screen.
Her job cleaning rooms at the Sable Hotel
pays for the car that takes her across town
to wait tables at The Parthenon, which covers rent
for the apartment where she lets out dresses
and mends the knees of pants that have bent too often
to the god of clean floors. Time being infinite,
all she needs is a fourth job to pay for everything else.
One of the women in the ad looked
like she must have looked twenty years ago,
if she was right when she touched her face in the mirror
behind the TV that she was younger and beautiful once
and didn't know what was coming. Then she cleaned the mirror
of her face by walking away. The rest of her shift,
she repeated the word vacation in her head and imagined
the ocean touching her body softly and rhythmically,
a liquid clock of a billion hands. When the word Tahiti
came to mind, she said it out loud to the bed
she was making, as if asking it to come away with her.
The bed said no. Not no so much as nothing.
Though it looked perfect when she was done, ready
for sleep or sex or dreams, but only after
she gave the bedspread a quick tug in the left corner
and smoothed out the last wrinkle with her hand.