Bed

The bed is the centerpiece of my life. It’s been a twin, squeaky with springs, wooden frame with hammer marks etched into the sides from being put together and taken apart again. It’s been a queen, stiff from a factory floor, baby blue and not a mark on it, immaculate as the day it was created. It’s been a full, foam, firm, with a finish of plastic tartar smell, zinging the air.

The bed is where I exist, the outside clothes discarded on the dusty floor, large stained underwear pulled up my thighs, a large t-shirt, a pajama combination I swore never to wear because that’s exactly what my mother does. Always trying to be different. I can burrow there.

The bed is where I struggle. It’s the most honest place where I can let my scaffolding down, unhook the screws and bolts that are holding me together, let the loud metal clank as it unbecomes. A mighty structure tightly packed into stacks, onto the next location, to build itself back up again.