THE HOTEL MANAGER Poem by Jan Glas

The hotel manager has left me.
I miss him so badly that it hurts.
I've got to learn to sleep all over again.

I've got such fantastic memories.
We swam lengths each morning in ‘The Pearl'
before he went to the hotel.
We had our teeth whitened,
an endlessly beautiful summer arrived.
We biked a lot. He waved to passing boats.
It was just perfect.

My sister was happy for me that at last
I'd found somebody.
I wanted to know everything about him.
He told me about his youth, his mother,
his work as a hotel manager.
The hotel for example had 34 rooms.
He had a couple of nice colleagues.

Then I started to hold on to him
and that you must never do,
it says so in all the books.