Three short raps on the door
and the receptionist sweeps him into
the kitchen, a blizzard of
sibilants and affricates,
his late-adolescent head
a whirlwind of facts and nonsense.
I finish my gherkin,
drain and deforest the jar,
then adjoin it to the
glass and plastic metropolis
next to the toaster.
His new door clicks.
Four wordless days have passed now
since his cream cheese
avalanched onto the linoleum.
There it lounges,
the size of a toddler’s fist.
Day six. Cream cheese now reduced
to the size of a toddler’s middle finger.
In the closet lolls a mop bucket
half-full of cold flat water.
Two a.m. The door shatters open
and in smashes a tsunami of
slurred Slavic consonants
and teenage tittering.
Three a.m. What’s that?
The Soviet national anthem?
Day nine. Knuckles on bedroom door.
There he hovers, clutching
an empty gherkin jar.
“Could I please have this?”
