The Mattress

I remember the mattress, where you saw me asleep for the first time, where we held our breaths as friends passed my door, keeping our love a secret garden. I remember the mattress, where we lay lazily in heat, skipping work and the outside - waiting, wanting, to have and to hold a place just our own. I remember the mattress, how it would become a dream to me, change shape: from four sides and walls holding me to you; to a triangle, three lines, with that other body separating us; to a circle, forever knowing I could never leave you. Not that we married. I remember the mattress, where I’d read as a child, feeling mulch and moss in the damp fabric, sand dunes rising through the seams, even levitating; the mattress taking me beyond those words. I remember the mattress, as a map of friends, of tissue, of spilt drinks and nail varnish - red, your blood, hers - of letters stuffed under pillow at a parent’s approaching foot. I remember the mattress, pillows pushed to the bottom in sweat, sheets tossed into a curve like a smile, those pillows as eyes, tangled legs as a nose, our splayed fingers the crooked teeth with white tips. I remember that mattress. It was the last thing they loaded into the van. How empty the apartment looked without it. Your things in boxes. My eulogy spent. I remember the mattress. I remember you.