Only the top half of an earth-shaped
tree crested the sill, the sky like
a discontinuation of sky, like a notion

of sky if condemned to the tin-coloured
twin of a disused pool. Olympic & opaque.
This was my third day in the hotel, with only

my aching back for company, & oh how
I longed for that company to grow slack
& stale, an unanswered text, a missing

anniversary, some unfathomable excuse
that excused the ache entirely from this
dancing. How to call my body a friend

then, when so-called walk, with all its frailty
& bluster, was reduced to that thin wedge
between bed & toilet. This was supposed

to be a holiday. This was supposed to be.
The worthy end to an unworthy year. My
partner with her song voice trudging

in, performance-like, proclaiming that
without me, the entire trek was a wreck.
I don’t care about any of it, without you, she said.

I knew the truth, though: that even in full
strength, I had the madness to carry misery
with me everywhere, that even in this land

of kings that abdicate to death, beloved
patriarchs replaced by playboy princes that no
one dared declare a twit beyond a sideways glance,

even in this land of endless golden islands, cheap
beer & back massages, I could make a monument
to my misery, write poems about discontinued skies

& frozen lumbar & tin-coloured twins & toilets.
The poet’s plague, I sometimes called it, though
more than likely, the cancer of thy father, who despite

the world I knew as a child, despite the one I
believed in, always made his pain central. Often,
I wondered, if that pain was really real? He saw

before him, the railway line, the sleekness
of its metal, & made the line his mission.
At its end was end, surely. What I mean is,

he never saw the crook or jut, or how some men
take that metal home with them. He never saw
his own father, the king who was not quite a king,

kin only to the Kingdom of God, that foul passage,
where pain was promised for the promise of painlessness.
Both made matrimony to this make of men: that pain

was not only necessary but affirming. That pain
said everything, just like the poem, with its
jutting edges, its mangled spine, its fury.

The truth is, I wish I could’ve afforded a better
hotel room, a better view, some frame to take
my mind to kingdoms, even as my partner

dances across the room to me, with all the love
& tenacity of someone trying to draw pain
from a body that is falling, failing. I owe her

this, I owe her more than this, to sit
upright & proclaim my screaming pain in
this dancing. I take her hands then, take her

hips then, hold her like she holds me, a play-
boy playing with this thing called love, the sky
in frame like a pool just warm enough to swim in.