Our Bed
Poem
I get up to pee at four in the morning.
Like most four in the mornings,
The apartment is cold and dark.
The cat’s claws skitter across the linoleum,
chasing something unseen in the blackness.
We’re almost out of toilet paper, but
I don’t reach into the closet for another roll.
My dreams are calling me back.
When I stumble into our room,
the spell of sleep still thick in my eyes,
I waft in the scent of sweat and
that Hawaiian escape candle.
My eyes find you in the haze.
Our bed is chaos,
A mangled mess of mismatched sheets,
peeling, in protest, away from the
corners of the old battered mattress
that has seen two lifetimes
at this point which has
only made it more hard.
Saggy nostalgic pillows are piled and
strewn about in stupid abundance.
You are on your back,
the only time I get to see you
silent and serene.
And I crawl into the nest
we built of gathered things,
garage sale stuff from our old lives.
I hug the uncovered pillow you hug
like some future child of ours
and smile my way into sleep.
more by NOELLE CURRIE
Photograph by Gabriel Santiago
