LIFE Poem: The In Betweens, by Tammy Goh

All the hotels
you’ve lived in,
scanned into,
slept in.

One where your mom couldn’t help
but eat the sixteen-dollar chocolate bar,
and how
you had to run, you ran!
To the store to find its twin.
Because things in the hotel aren’t really yours.
Only they are
until the bill comes,
stamping your time with a price.

All these hotels,
with their brown couch, brown carpet, brown curtains,
morph into one
forgotten home, home?
Only,
a different you within them.

One where you lost your
vongole pasta (oh how wonderful you were!)
in the marbled toilet
Woosh, Woosh!
Vowing to never eat it again,
you really never did.

One where between the beds,
one queen and your twin,
you dropped your phone—
spending late nights texting,
or swiping through pictures,
eager to show the world back home
what you did.
What did you do?

At night,
when your parents orchestrated
their melodious rumble
and only the flashlight in your phone remained,
you could feel
the shape of your head.
Hugged by
a cloud that lost its fluff,
never again would it mold—
this well
this perfectly
this familiarly