Outside, it kept raining— eternal,
infernal rain, tenting us in.
The Australian tourists were going to miss
their bus, since they ordered a taxi late.
Someone was calling the front desk at the station,
trying to ask them to wait. The lobby smelled
like liquefied rubber and raincoats, runny
newsprint, coffee, boiled peanuts. Downstairs
in the bookstore, lamplight held the color
of melted tallow. I made my way to the third
floor, where two rooms had been designated
as a spa. Only one other client was signed in
at the counter. A woman gave me a pair of plastic
slippers, a cotton bathrobe, a thin folded towel.
The shower was thinner than the rain, but hot.
In one of the rooms, the light was more than dim;
I lay on a cot partitioned by curtains. Hands
moved over my back, my nape, my limbs, spreading
oils speckled with sugar or salt, the faint
trace of ginger flowers. I sank into the sheets,
heavy as a stone and damp. The woman who pressed
into my muscles with her fingers was deft though she
was blind. She knew how to work the levers of my spine until
something caught and released, until something fell away.