Sometimes I wish my bed were my own
Joe and me in California, 1982, the year before we married.
Beth Mende Conny © 1982
For Joe, in celebration of July 14, 1979, and Oxnard
Sometimes I wish my bed were my own
so I can hog the blankets
and stretch like an earthquake
without fear of waking you.
So I can walk around the apartment naked
without a receptive audience
and sing show tunes in the shower
without a thought to singing off key.
So I can eat chocolate chip cookies for breakfast
lunch
and dinner
and act like a full -fledged
but guiltless
son of a bitch.
So I can sit comatose in front of the TV
watching reruns of reruns
and humming laxative commercials to myself.
So I can camp out on the can
with all the books I have ever wanted to read
without having to listen to the inevitable knock
and familiar question
“Did you fall in or something?”
So I can let the vacuum vacation
and the cat hairs fly
like an Oklahoma dust storm.
So I can go to bed early
go to bed late
go to bed with the luxury of knowing
that my bed was my own.
But sometimes
I think I would miss your warm feet under the covers
and your hands
which from beneath the folds of our blanket
find a place to connect with my body.
I would miss the way you smile in the morning,
your chemistry books strewn around the apartment like atoms gone crazy
the way you cook spaghetti.
I think I would miss our sometimes silly/sometimes not conversations
and your silence when you listen to my sometimes silly/sometimes not worries
about losing my sense of humor
my front door key
my independence
a silence that is calm in the eye of my storm.
And perhaps most of all
I would miss creeping my head onto your pillow at night
breathing in your breath
and knowing
that somewhere in this madly spinning world
with its volcanoes
wars
and rising cost of movies
there is a bed that holds our stillness
a bed that is our own.
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