We had traveled all day
and part of the night.
Nashville, the midpoint—
eight hundred miles behind us,
eight hundred more to go.

We were tired and lost.
A bed, a shower,
sleep drew us in.

Across three bridges
and a deserted Broadway,
we found the black-brick
Sam Davis Hotel—
seventeen stories above Nashville.

Water-stained walls.
Ripped curtains
that wouldn’t close.

Outside the window,
SAM DAVIS HOTEL $15 A NIGHT
blinked on and off
in a buzz of gas and electrodes.

Dark green carpet
shadowed the halls.
Doors smudged white.

The elevator groaned upward.
The liftman
would not look at us.

We tried to touch,
to kiss hard enough
to block out
the smash of bottles in the hall,
the rumble of drunken voices,
the growl of the ancient cables.
But your touch felt vulgar,
mean.

A siren turned a corner below.
I got up
from the stained mattress,
stood in the forty-watt
bathroom light,
watched water spiral
through the cracked toilet.

I returned to bed.
I thought you were asleep.

But I should have known
you were awake, like me
wondering if sixteen hundred miles
was too far to go.