ManicDDaily

Untucked

When he’s away (increasingly,
these days), she
sleeps at the foot
of the bed.  It’s for the light, she
tells him, or rather
the turning off  of the light,
the lone lamp that sits on a
dwarfed file cabinet at the bed’s
bottom, not the best configuration, but rooms
are not always perfect for the
furniture people bring to them.

It was hard at first
to find a spot down there; hard to tug the top
sheet from its tuck, and even once uprooted,
to squeeze into its tight pocket, her limbs
a swaddled ricochet of angled waist, hips,
knees, aimed to keep her feet from
the opposite dangle.

I miss you too, he replies,
but he, someone who sleeps when tired, eats
when hungry, does not quite understand her fidget
around burning vacancy, the twist and turn of one
so defended she
can only meet need through
a maze, or over
a parapet.

It’s for the light, she tells him, the turning off
of the light, trying to describe the purgatory of
the doggedly dwindling, but
the truth, of course, is
more complex.