Traveling

Five hours before I’ve awakened,
my friend Marta watches the sun rise in Hungary,
last night in her B&B ended.
Green hills edged with granite,
ancient relations waiting for coffee
across the street, her family’s
apartment, home to several generations,
is to be sold soon, her aunt,
the one her father named her for,
moving into more manageable quarters.

I travel around my small universe,
battered suitcases of experience
bundled under my arms,
duffle stuffed with the favorite clothes
I’ve worn out, or more likely, no longer fit.
I wear several layers, as if sneaking out of a hotel,
my bill unpaid, to get me over
the mental borders I cross and re-cross each day.

I am exhausted at sunset, even
having moved just a little way from my bed,
where the traveling really happens,
where moths fly from my mouth
and my feet pound the pillows
in search of a spat I cannot
recall, cannot leave behind.

Born on Long Island, Cheryl A. Rice‘s poems have appeared in Baltimore Review, Chronogram, Dead Snakes, Florida Review, Home Planet News, Misfit Magazine, The Temple, and Trailer Park Quarterly, and in the anthologies Wildflowers, Vol. II (2002: Shivastan Publishing), and For Enid, With Love (2010: NYQuarterly). She is founder/host of the now-defunct Sylvia Plath Bake-Off. Her blog, Flying Monkey Productions, is at http://flyingmonkeyprods.blogspot.com/.