Artifact Hotel

There hangs, in a hotel in Chicago,on the thirtieth floor, behind a doorwith an electric deadbolt, a photoof the top of the hotel itselfframed against an evacuated sky,lightning rod piercing the gloss.Inches below, a second photo,this one the hotel’s lower exterior,its choir of glass. The eye strainsto suture them, not by movingthe bottom photo up to completethe structure, but by projecting a newnonexistent section, several floorsin height, into the gap. The hotelspills over the top of the bottomframe, crawls on brocade wallpaperinto the bottom of the top photo,accommodating absencewith fluency. Behind the wallon which the artifact hotel, taller nowthan the actual, hangs, my daughter sleepsin the other room of the suitein a loaner crib with cold metal barswhile I watch a dramedy on mute.How effortlessly the mind tunnelsthrough this wall to her, straightensher sleep sack, smooths a curl of hair,but I wasn’t really in there, with herinaccessible dream, in which I mayplay a role, but she doesn’t yet dreamin images. I am em, oad, speechrudiment rather than a man in a roominside a hotel inside itself, getting up, tiptoeing across green carpetto see if the floor I’m on belongsto the bottom photo, the top, or oneI’ve projected in between.