Cail Judy

MOTEL 6

They climb the rust belt stairs

Boots heavy on threaded steel

The father walks ahead and

the young boy follows as

the smoke from his father’s cigarette

mingles with the cold prairie air.

They stop in front of their motel room

Father leaning over the railing ledge

Starting at the parking lot below

His eyes two pools of midnight.

The boy looks up at his father and asks

when they’ll be going home.

His father turns his head and looks down

at the boy and sees

a flicker in his pale blue eyes.

I’ve been trying to go home for ten years, son.

Maybe tomorrow.

He drops the cigarette over the railing

And it dances through the night air

Sparks against the asphalt

and burns out.

Cail Judy is the co-founder of the Wolf Mountain Writing Collective. He finds joy in bringing wayward poems, sad bastard lyrics and weird stories into this world. He aspires to thunderheads, smoke and distant lightning on the page.