Rush hour drains down sewer grates.
The sun clings onto the horizon.
A parent insists that she’s fine.

In the shopfront’s natural dark, mannequins undress.
Dogs walked are spooked by emptying roads still
lousy with scents. The town’s only gay bar wedged between
a street of shuttered days. It’s Tuesday and it reeks of

an argued-away loneliness,
Blair Witch on the hotel TV again,
my skin erupting in hives.

These drag queens don’t lip sync but interrupt
the music every few seconds with
a thickly accented half-joke. The airline maroons me
here. A McDonald’s, the jewel of the Industrial Park.

Beyond the hedgerows,
a somewhat family funeral, a wasted double
bed, this commuter town in the shadow

of a city. Nobody can dance to this:
streetlights glaring through the window. Bored security
on the door for all of twelve people. One clearly
straight woman determined to dance herself clean into

the night. Real darkness speeding towards
my Uber’s windscreen. Inside the chain hotel,
my nakedness is slathered with hope.

The air conditioning whispers, sputters. An irritant.
A blister pack. TV static. Now the streetlights are
dozing. The dull crash of a fox knocking over a bin,
devouring today’s wastage. Then, almost silence.