bed

My bed looks the same every day.

As I get into it, as I make it, as I stand from it, as it peeks into view past my computer screen.

But it doesn't feel the same, not every day.

Sometimes it reassures me, firm like a car seat.

I fall asleep and then I wake up.

Sometimes it feels like a basement, the kind that is cold and haunted even though it's finished and carpeted. The kind where you stay smiling, but you also stay close.

Sometimes it feels like an insignia. “Look at him - so grown, so clean.”

Sometimes I want to throw tomato juice on it and go for a walk.

I remember a bed with bright yellow sheets where I expanded and contracted into myself.

I remember a wood-framed bed in a sage room with a fetal indentation.

I remember knowing, as soon as I touched a bed or brought someone into it, that I'd never be there with them again.

I remember sitting on the edge of a quilted bed, marring a friendship for months.

I remember a cold bed by the window with an invisible line down the middle.

I remember a warm, cushioned bed with a water bottle and a dog cage beside it.

I remember a leather couch that I employed for distance.

I remember a series of beds in which I laid next to no one and rose hours after the sun.

I remember a deep peace in a familiar bed in a new apartment, just for a moment.

I remember hoping, believing maybe that was the bed where I belonged.

My own bed is a cast-iron, seasoned by recipes I thought I wanted.

My bed is a ceiling fresco in progress, and for now, I sleep only among its fading depictions.