Hotel Room Wall
The first time I learn to wedge the top of a chair back under a door handle, I am ten years old. We are nearly out of gas. All four of us in one bed, my father doesn’t sleep a wink.
Last night, my wife and I are reading about zealots with militias in the Sonora Desert, and there is a banging on the deadbolted door between our room and the next. The sound of coyotes comes in off the balcony. Our dog stares, wild-eyed.
The next morning, the car is pointed west, and the rocks jut out of the sunrise. Layers of ethereal blue, pink, and yellow dissolve to the peaks. This is the ninth day we’ll sleep in a new bed.
Thomas Cook‘s poetry, fiction, and essays have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Chattahoochee Review, Rappahannock Review, and Quarterly West. Since 2009, he has been an editor and publisher of Tammy. He lives in Los Angeles, CA and Galesburg, IL.