You are a tourist
bug-bitten,
sleepless,
back dripping with sweat.
An uninvited percussionist beating centuries of brick road
with a fifty dollar rolling suitcase
and you stumble across a Roa mural
and you order meatballs and Kriek
and every sentence starts with
“sorry.”
And later two Belgian hippies chant
and drag their pale rice paper wrists
across the rims of Tibetan bowls.
Nobody’s speaking
and the candlelight pulls beads of condensation
from your tulip.
The girls sing a Smiths song
as their blonde boy dutifully strums an electric guitar.
Knuckles tighten on your thigh.
You feel warm like you’ve been bathed in red light
and like if you were disposable
this is where you’d want to be cast aside,
rumpled and blown through alleys
bobbing aimlessly in whichever canal,
flicked into the mouth
of a bottle of Polar,
snuffed between two licked fingers,
bussed and rattled into a dumpster out back
with a cathedral view
where two beautiful Belgian girls share a joint
and exhale in perfect harmony.
Marissa DeSantis is a Cleveland-based writer of stories and poetry. They perform regularly with the improv and storytelling show "This Improvised Life" and with storytelling show "Story Club Cleveland." They spin holiday vinyl seasonally as DJ Misfit Toy.
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