He wakes in the static
of a nameless hotel room.
The dream clings
not a ghost, but a wet shirt.
Last night’s phone call still bleeding
in the mirror.


He walks like silence walks,
heavy with something
he hasn’t spoken in years.
His fingers tremble
as if each nail were a tiny antenna
trying to find her frequency.


Down the stairs
his breath is graffiti
on the glass of the revolving door.
The city hisses like a snake
that remembers him from another life.
He is a boy again,
trying not to cry in public.


There is a man with a payphone stall
just off the corner he trades coins
for connection.
Seventeen bucks a call
is the going rate for hope.


But he has none.
Only the ache of a thousand
could have beens
stacked like unread postcards
in his chest.
She is at the airport.
She is not coming back.


He kneels beside a beggar
asks him for mercy.
The beggar laughs like a church
with a broken bell.
You want a piece of me?
Here take the only one left.


The beggar’s hand hesitates,
but then it opens
like an old book.
Inside:
A breath.
A dollar.
A quiet dying star.


The call costs seventeen bucks.
And the man,
the man who hadn’t spoken to God in years,
whispers her name into a plastic mouthpiece
as if it were prayer.
He forgets the world owes no grace.


She says goodbye in another language.
He doesn’t understand,
but the dial tone
says enough.
The beggar watches him
like a soldier watches a falling bird.


When it ends,
he doesn’t cry.
He counts the silence
as it climbs his throat.
The beggar says nothing
only turns his palms up
as if asking the morning
what mercy costs these days.