Ashtray road has no trays but it’s full of ash. The former farmer quit smoking a long time ago. Carousel music splashes discretely through the whispering trees. You expect to see one-eyed midgets and lost-bound paranoid-drunk hobos, burnt witches or frozen Russian soldiers but there’s nobody else on Ashtray road. If it blows, you let it blow.
The road from here to there is the road from there to here except there is no here when you stumble by. It’s all there. Clouds hang bare-low, there’ll be hard rain, you know. You open your mouth to taste the air, you sense the delicious and savourate the rare. Your nose runs crazy, addicted to the smell: is that a glimpse there of the ghost hotel?
Foto: © Caroline Barberis, 2009