Marquette

Would I say that a hostel is a place to stay?

A hostel is a place of borrowed nostalgia, where other lives have left their moments beneath the beds and under pillows.

They hang in the trees with the voodoo beads, and are passed beneath by heads that look and squint and wonder where they came from.

And the beads hang above a garden and a sloping bench set upon bulging, irregular bricks. A woman sits at the lip of her bed and smiles beneath her cigarette. She's hoping that the couple will catch the dead-star light of her gaze as they whisper on the bench in the mottled garden beneath the trees.

She watches as the two figures reach into each other and tangle themselves together for a time with tight, slender legs. A moment passes, forgetful of the last and unconcerned with the next. They drift and dance away and never look to see the birthing sun which hides behind the dim-sky fold.

The woman pulls herself from her bed and drifts along the porch and down the stairs where she lingers in the empty garden. She takes a can which is almost empty and wets her lips with it. The liquid makes them crack and creak and washes away the dust which has thickened in the grooves like blood in lifeless veins.

"It's goanna be a hot summer", she says. "Its goanna be a hot, hot summer. How y'all doing? How y'all doing? Its goanna be a hot, hot summer. How y'all doing? You have a fine, fine day, now. Its goanna be a hot summer."

Once, she might have known who she was talking to.

Atop the bench, beneath the trees, a chain of beads have fallen. Noticing them, the woman smiles and hangs them over her head with landscape hands. She begins to twirl and giggle as the beads swing from her neck, and she pays no mind to the plastic which peaks from behind the thinned, flaking paint.

She dances and she sings to a song she should not know and when a shadow comes to ask her name, she says- well, that depends which day.

Then, as the beads grow heavy, she lifts her laughing head

to cry beneath the voodoo trees

beneath the voodoo trees.