The swamp light of the cheap hotel
has followed us here
to a small hours waiting room
in the middle of a soupy nowhere
for a dawn bus that may or may not exist
(my phrasebook Spanish not entirely to be trusted).

Stiff-backed on plastic chairs
we’re alone in the brackish night
the insistent outside skulking at the open door,
air thick with mist from the banana plantations,
small shadows scuttering past our feet,
somewhere the screak of a murderous bird.  

You disappear to the Gents
which must be many strip-lit corridors away
for you are gone and gone and gone
and the plastic sweats beneath my thighs.
In the half light, a man with studded shoes
steps into the humming doorway.