Passed Out on a Bubble

I’m the only customer renewing a license
in the linoleum-and-Formica on a warm
September day, at the twelve-dollar
window the clerk asks if I ever

passed out. I don’t remember waking,
missing part of my story, wondering where
the time went. When you pass out
what happens that’s different from dancing

down the street to the noodle shop?
Maybe that was the time I was thinking
about South Beach instead of paying
attention in class, or when I was eating

curry-chicken with the opossums
on Monkey Mountain, or sharing a bottle of port
with the Giant Spoon Monster,
or when I grabbed the side of the ginger bubble

and watched Ben inside harvesting oysters,
the bubble broke and I fell out of the chair.