Something unwinds and breaks, spilling glass across the room.
It takes time to establish that a thing’s not there – noise, stars,
excitement, grief – like the shutting-off of certain lights.
I remembered having been to Florida as a child,
but could only really summon up the glare of heat on roads,
a beach, and a skyline of durationless hotels.
We had a rental car with cruise control, which I remember
thinking drove itself. But now from up here I see everything,
the city like a signal on the verge of fading out.
I drank a bottle of ‘tropical’ flavoured liquid and sat down
on the bed, thinking about my brothers – thousands
of miles away in several directions – staring through
the window at a bright display of grand pianos,
an old cinema, and the empty space a building used to be.
A group of children ran around through jets of water.
Something unwinds and breaks: like a morning? silence?
cables? arms? During the night I woke up to an accident
and lay there motionless beneath the ceiling fan.