Pull of an Empty Tide

The bed sagged like a cracked raft,

smelling of rust, salt, and lost time.

The other side was hollowed out,

a dent where someone used to dream.

The air bent yellow at the edges.

A radio somewhere cracked and whined —

low country and western misery,

a voice leaking out about someone who never came home.

The floor leaned west, 
always west,

because that's where things go 
when they’re too tired to fight.

The clock on the wall had stopped 
sometime last night,

but no one noticed, 
not even the dark.

The sea dragged the dead nets, 
and the chain inside the walls, 
hummed low 
against the bones of the room.

It ran through my empty wallet,

through my cracked teeth,

through the long thin cigarettes 
burning themselves out.

It rattled whenever I breathed too hard.

The motel bible sat open on the nightstand,

a page torn loose,

a note scrawled in blue ink:

"don’t wait for me."

I tasted rust,

saw the green of rotting rope,

felt the floorboards creak 
with a tired red sadness.

White gulls circled low,
no purpose left;
their shadows vanish
into the sea’s forgetting.

I thought about standing up,
walking toward the window,
singing along 
with the sad broken radio.

I didn’t move. 
The tide had already 
taken everything.

Ocean Cay, Atlantic Ocean