J.O. Morgan
[Long after checkout time]
[Long after checkout time]
Long after checkout time
one of the housemaids found me
showed me sheets she’d bundled
into a black plastic bag.
Blood-soaked, the once-white cotton
now as stiff as canvas,
glossed in places where the blood
had pooled before it dried.
I checked the guest-list: a girl
and her father; recalled our small-talk
as he settled up; the girl reclining
in the foyer’s antique rocking chair.
We lugged the lumpen bin bag
to the hotel’s boiler room
opened the grille for the furnace
and fed the bloodied sheets into the flames.
Upstairs we turned the mattress
damp-side-down and found on its reverse
a stain of similar size and shape, dulled
to the colour of rust, yet dry enough
to cover with fresh white sheets.