covers raze it never fails. you wash the sheets. you make your bed. you lie in it. and within a week, the comforter and the thin beige blanket beneath it are in a heap on the floor. you sleep alone but for the ghosts of dead friends haunting the edges of your dimming vision. you don't toss and turn the way you did as a younger man. you slide onto your left side, curl into the shape you took when you were drowning in amniotic fluid, and wait for the slow encroachment of whatever dreams the night sees fit to give you. the thrashing you do now is limited to split-second pockets of panic after_midnight that have you kicking against the loss of consciousness in an effort to convince yourself you aren't about to die. you can't explain why every cotton fortress you construct is cursed. "i think you're fighting," your father says. "i think you're fighting all the bullshit in your life while you sleep." maybe he's right. but that's a fight you can't win even with your eyes open. 230616 ... ovenbird “I want new sheets,” he said. “The ones I have are for little kids. I want plain black.” So I ordered new sheets. When they arrived I took the old ones from his bed–blue and orange and white checks with stylized lizards wandering through the blue expanse of cotton. I folded them up and threw them away. They were threadbare, not worth keeping. He found them in the garbage. He tried to hide what that made him feel, seeing the cloth that had covered his sleeping body right up to the moment when childhood started to slip, slated for the dumpster. I found him at the dining room table, distress clear on his face. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “I don’t want you to throw them away,” he said quietly. “You mean the sheets? I didn’t think you wanted them anymore.” “I don’t want them on my bed but I don’t want them to be GONE,” he said. I could see him grappling with his attachment to the comforts of his past. I watched the teenager he is becoming fighting against the boy he wants to leave behind. I know what the world would tell him. It would say, “It’s ridiculous to cry over sheets! They don’t mean anything. They’re just fabric.” I know better than that. They hold the history of every night he has spent safe in his bed, dreaming his young dreams. They contain years of somatic memory, a link to everything he has ever been. I pulled those sheets out of the garbage without question. I put them through the wash. I folded them neatly and tucked them into his closet. “It’s good to have a backup set of sheets,” I said. “Yes, it’s good to have extra,” he agreed. And I watched the dismay drain from his body. I hope he understood what I was saying as I rescued the crumpled duvet cover and pillow cases–that you don’t have to throw away your childhood. It’s okay to hold on. It’s okay for your heart to stay soft. 251016 what's it to you? who go blather from