I woke at three in someone else's spare room

I woke at three in someone else's spare room,

in a city I don't live in,

thirsty in the way you get

when the air is dry and your body

hasn't caught up to being somewhere else.

The kitchen was down a hall.

I filled a glass in the dark,

standing at a stranger's sink,

the city outside doing what it does at three —

a siren going somewhere,

the particular quiet of a street

that isn't mine.

I drank.

The water was wrong.

Not bad. Just wrong.

Something mineral in it, or too flat,

or the pipes, I don't know —

just a taste that said: not yours.

Not the water I drink without tasting,

the one my body knows

before my mouth does.

I stood at the sink longer than made sense.

Went back to the spare room.

Lay in the wrong dark

of someone else's quiet,

and my body knew it —

the way it always does,

before you've thought the word,

before you've let yourself

call it what it is.