Smoke Twenty One

When I got back to my tiny room everything had changed. Someone has been in here. The bed had been made, sheets strangling the mattress in a silence of white. The small bin had been relieved of its guilty burden: chocolate cake wrappers, empty grape soda cans. I opened Windows to the applause of street vendor traffic from the laneway, inhabiting the transit memory of whoever had followed the cleaner into the room. Inside the small shower cubicle, traces of moisture. That wasn’t it. Something about the hum of the small bar fridge. No, not that either. The stationery set out on its practical wooden desk. The alarm clock blinking slightly beside the bed. All traces of dust swept from the linoleum floor. Scent of peach from a spray can. As the baseball warmed up on the wall box I patched in, feeling a slight rent in time. That strange sensation I had felt in the days leading up to your departure, but still there long after our Incheon embrace. Desires like packets of dollar fives or hundreds and thousands, re-routed in transit.