song of the mattress

song of the mattress she slept, wrinkled and small on satin sheets, a band-aide covering her mattress, knees tucked tightly beneath her chin and legs pressed against her breasts as if waiting for a gigantic splash when she hit the water motionless, she dreamed of burgundy and peaches from georgia and hoped to drive to smyrna on sunday two hundred and thirteen miles, south and mostly straight funny how juice spilled from a peach onto burgundy satin looks like blood it was raining when it happened but that isn’t important she would have loved the rain on any other day and recorded it on her already overcrowded ‘to do’ list but today, peaches and burgundy satin sheets embezzled her sleeping mind and kept the rain out when she rolled over, the creaking sound from overworked coils reminded her of that regretful night in april when hidden within the box spring, tornadoes of metal circles pushed hard against white pine collapsing under the weight of two dissimilar bodies before exploding again before collapsing again before exploding again in unison, complaining springs beneath her body screamed for silence while she battled fiercely to hold on to consciousness as the bulldozer push of his weight drove her deeper into oblivion dazed, her dream made a wide right turn at the intersection where she thought of headlights and honking horns spinning clockwise like a fleeting second hand with no intention to stop until the minutes all ran dry plums, swollen and tender— purple patches that promised to never heal— caused her to tighten the grip on her own body as she trembled and began to sob loudly drowning out the erratic song of the mattress he would not stop until she made him stop…abruptly the noise was loud but for only a second funny how blood mixed with peach juice on burgundy sheets still looks like blood the song of the mattress was silenced tolbert