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60 Aubade There, in a cheap motel, just off the highway (why pay more for six hours of sleep?), it is the quiet gurgle that causes me to leap from bed— that stirring, full of an urgency only one who loves can hear, the way a baby wakes a mother by simply moving differently in the night. Blood pours from his nose. The sink fills with it. It runs dracula-like from his mouth. The white vanity top turns red. The beautiful words leave: He is hemorrhaging in a super 8, outside calhoun, Georgia. Looking up, in the mirror his eyes raise. He acknowledges what we both already know: our mistake is grave, traveling too soon after his surgery. after the bleeding mercifully stops, it’s that look of his that keeps falling through me, repeating and repeating I am leaving you. onto the highway, heading toward rocking water and flipping palms, I remember taking towels down to the motel office, apologizing to the manager as I handed over the red sopping linen:“It just looks like someone has been murdered.” 61 not someone, I realize now, accelerating, but some thing. and now some thing else has been born, and has begun driving slowly, following behind. ...

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