I feel bed. I am bed. A bed girl.

So sheet me.

To bed oneself is death preparation. Same spot, each night, narrow. Same spot, each night, dark.

It is, also, a sowing. I am seed. I cannot see.

To be bedded is a rosary, a chain of evenings preyed on. I pray. Announce myself vulnerable through prayer. Dare hunters to enter the chamber between pressed hands. Crossbow, longsword, mace. Wild knights.

Brandishing poison dreamings in slender vials, suitors have come to perch on quilt corners as I drift off.

The bed a sea.

Insomnia thrashes, a local war, performed right here in this harbor. The casualties are legion. I am legion. But you can call me Armada. Won’t, won’t you call me?

Bed is a debt I owe. Without doubt.

The children I’ve had stay longer than they are welcome. The husbands come and stay, come, and stay. They are hot little engines that could.

Invalids linger in other beds, wishing only to be valid again. Or, this is the lie they tell. Once, a girl carried her rape mattress from class to class. She asked for help, but results were mixed.

Daybeds are a way to feeling nothing.

Better to go deep into down. When the last straw breaks, milk sours.

This is my rest, my remainder, the figure of a fallen spine, its scoliotic curvature, couverture, glossy-chocolate-coating upon the sugarplums, candy apple, duvet.

Bed is the cheat sheet. Promising to increase our numbers.

Bed rocks a bye. When you wake, you shall have—all the pretty little horses.

Bed lulls and lies. You shall not wake.

And when you do, all the horses will be eaten. Sour dapple, candy dapple. Pinto bean. Grain.

Be grateful. In April, flowers will thwart beds with waking. Bed is the shortest of the longest pilgrimages. Some other country haunts this one from below. Only the bones seek it, sinking into matter, sinking under the weight of other bones—loosely, briefly bedded as they are, as we are, in flesh.

One age equals one sheep. O flock of not-quite-eternity.

Count them jump. The fence, electrified. Watch them fall. Barbed intellect. Razor-wired-savoir-faire.

You don’t get it. I want to feel bed.

Beneath all the bed I am, I am also bone. A winter monster.

Kindling.

If you set this bed on fire with me in it, I may reach Valhalla before spring. If you set this bed on fire, I’ll feel the sun go down on me. O slow western sow.

O moon. O erroneous knight. O lover. O loam. O sea.