Overnight Guest

Waiting for your ride in front of the house where you spent the night, where, as a third ear during their endless intimate, important, and kinky phone calls, you pretended to rinse glassware; you were a dog from the pound, grateful, sniffing the upholstery. Later, lying in the center of their king-sized bed, a giant wall-to-wall mirror, isolating you like a rabbit; it was also their exercise room with torture equipment; something in you twitched; flickering a bizarre video in your head. It's morning now. You're standing outside, with nightgown and toothbrush wrapped in your purse, waiting for a bus to take you somewhere else. You're depressed. They're asleep of course. Their network wrapped around them. You keep wondering why you're missing something. Then you look back and see your pricked-up ears, your waggy self, stuck inside their picture window, where for years it will wave at you—naive, apologetic, embarrassed.