Blank

I hear her hand brushing the bed sheet, scraping for the side of the mattress as if in a hurry. Maybe she needs to get out of the crowded room before her self esteem runs and catches up with her. A rustle of the comforter and the way the mattress becomes heavier on my side tells me that she is on her feet, ready to leave. I lift my head to the side and peak through my squinting, pleading eyes, only to see her back facing me as she scrambles around the floor looking for her clothes and high heels. She doesn't want to leave anything here because she doesn't want this night to stick out compared to any other. I wish I never saw her cute body slip through the crack in the door. The hall light was shining on her face just right, for a glimmer or sparkle in her eye to catch like a reflective prism. But it wasn’t a wink and it wasn’t a sign. And the door clambered shut with a final goodbye. 


I sit up in bed and my feet search for the floor, for anything to be there; I was sort of hoping that I was still in a dream; that she had never left. And I glance over at the flashing red alarm clock that a maid never bothered to set to the right time, and I see the fragments of light that splatter symmetrically across that pad of hotel paper that was left there on purpose, with a pen intentionally placed lying slantwise on top. And I realize that the pen cap is still fitted snugly on the ball point, as if never to be removed; and the pad is still as blank as before I even checked-out the room earlier this evening, untouched but begging to be written upon. She didn’t leave a number and she didn’t leave a name. She didn’t leave a thank you or a you’re welcome or even a goodbye. She didn't want me to think that tonight meant something special, to either of us.

I was nothing to her. And tomorrow night she will mean nothing to me, when another girl walks in  and sleeps with me and shuts the door, leaveing the hotel paper blank, the same way,
the same fucking way.