Bedtime Dialectic

We open the vents in the bedroom walls,  in the evenings before bedtime. We tug them by their coarse string leads, and they snap plastic tabs into place. We tug the same string in the mornings, and they close by the same action. Tug to open, tug to close. Snap. In the bedroom walls. Plastic tabs like child-proof latches. You can’t just pull; it requires the specific intention in the movement of a wrist. A now-familiar snap in the cartilage, like a plastic tab jolted into place.

I can’t sleep without the fresh air anymore. Maybe all those years sleeping in the unfinished loft made it so.  I cocoon myself in the duvet. I sink into the soft mattress, until it feels like being cradled in the sag of an army cot.

We move, and we rearrange: novelty, and the familiar.

we remake things much
as they were without a thought
closets basements lofts