Hotel Room

“Indeed, the room seems like a substitute for the woman’s resignation”—Mark Strand on Edward Hopper’s “Hotel Room, 1931,” in his book Hopper (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001)  

The woman is of the room but she is not in it. She is not fully clothed. She sits on the bed, her body forming a pair of conjoined L’s with legs against white sheet, head outlined by white wall. Luggage, bureau, chair, window, drape, all drifting away from us. Her mind is on the letter in her hands. She is anointed with sadness, her face in shadow. A moment occurs when rereading a letter, a falling out of the letter and back into oneself. She has not reached this moment. She passes back and forth between letter and herself. How far will she be forced to travel to be beyond the grip of this room, this letter? But a hotel room is the place to read such a letter, a letter one wishes had gone undelivered. Letters contain writing with a known destination. A hotel room is a destination always unknown. You are not where you are. Or who. It’s like a playground slide: where is the child when she slides down it? The woman is not here. She is a little girl who’s never slept in a hotel room.