At Motel 6 the Night DeeDee Died
       

Smell of mothball and sweat and gin,
the secondhand wool suit your father wore
while he paced all night in light rain.
Smell of wet salt through the sliding glass door;
on the cinder-block deck, step-step and turn.
Two miles to the south the plug's been pulled
on your slow inward torque and return
to the womb. Here, your loaded mother's in bed,
covers pulled high to blot out the outside
where he keeps his late watch under stars
wound with gauze, binding the new wound
of your car gunned, dead-on and at full speed,
into a brick bridge-pile. Dawn will dawn, eventually,
towing its wreckage of future. Below us, the sea.

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Copyright © 2022 Rebecca Foust All rights reserved
from The Cincinnati Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission