hemingway only said, Paris is the Ritz! because he hadn’t seen me yet
trust me, i am the Ritz on a Holiday Inn budget.
my whole life i spend loving hotels, obsessing over
overpriced mini fridges and eating in queen size beds
let me in and we’ll watch reruns of Seinfeld
deep sea diving on the armchair, you can melt my otter-pop tongue
from the heat of your mouth. my fingertips are freezing out here, the air conditioning
feels like a Manhattan blizzard and i think the fake plants are judging me.
what a cruel twist of fate, love is, leaving me in a one-sided love affair
in the lobby of the Plaza. i’m no eloise i can’t actually afford a room,
it’s an unrequited scenario, me and hotels.
but i’ll stay sitting out here all night if i have to, watch you from afar at continental breakfast.
it’s capital punishment to leave me out here lonely in a hotel lobby, second
only to an airport terminal in terms of worst places to be lonely. sharing a bench with geeks
touristing in hawaiian print shirts and bucket hats makes you realize
if they’ve found love, you’re really alone.
so you’d better come down here if you don’t want to see me on the
next flight to Jamaica or somewhere else i can wear a fanny pack and
feel like the biggest loser in the world who has just lost the two greatest loves of her life.

Olivia Rose Umstead is a poet and prose writer based in San Mateo, California. She is the 2020 Jean Burden Poetry Prize recipient, and her work has been selected for publication in magazines such as Prometheus Dreaming and Beyond Words Literary Magazine.