The girlfriend who doubles as her roommate, she says, came home in the early hours, by car, from her mother’s place in Topanga Canyon. I sit by a window almost as narrow as the slit of my rum-soaked eyes and stare offshore at a keep of wild rock that tilts a towering shadow like a pointer—toward how many flowering islands?—in the California spring. Her satin robe parts innocently as she tosses back her platinum pageboy with bangs and I taste the salt in the air.

a seaworthy trawler
called from night
fishing to port
rolls with a billow
in the morning glare

Somewhere between midnight and dawn, I misplaced her name. She does not ask me and I do not tell her mine.

First published in Modern English Tanka V3, N3 (Spring 2009)