Lie down with me.
We can sleep together.
For I have made this bed.
This bed of pillow and feather.
This castle of comforters with the towers of pillows and the throne of blankets and the crown of bliss.
It is easy to escape the stress and the work of the real world.
This bed is soft and cozy, always warmer than the air surrounding it.
Lie down with me.
Lie down in this bed and turn your life inside out.
I use this bed to leave behind everything I probably need to worry about.
A tickle in my back.
I cover my eyes with the sheets to get away from the fear.
The fear of you moving on and me staying here.
The fear of falling behind.
But this bed is comforting and calming and I don’t mind to fall behind, to fall into bed.
The tickle in my back grows stronger so I flip my pillow over to the cold side and bury my body in the soft, rolling hills of my comforter.
This bed is helpful to me.
You don’t see it yet but that is because you haven’t felt it.
I have slept in the bed of the gods and I know I will never leave.
The stars left their spots in the sky and they’re under the sheets listening to me grieve.
The moon tucked me in and promised never to deceive.
If you just listen you’ll start to believe.
The tickle in my back begins to sharpen.
This bed dulls the pain.
This bed.
This bed.
I love this bed and it loves me.
This bed is soft blues and softer pinks.
This bed is happy yellows and calming lavenders.
I wish you could see the sheets from underneath.
The tickle in my back has become a very sharp pain, and it’s stinging me over and over again.
But this bed will protect me.
Won’t it?
This bed was made for me to sleep in.
I lift my sheets and crawl completely under, happy to be protected and warm.
The stings in my back hurt.
Oh God, they hurt.
I rub at them because even with my body wrapped up completely in the sheets of my bed, they hurt.
My hand comes back ******.
I turn over to look at my bed and I see that what you told me is true.
I see why the only person who didn’t crawl into this bed is you.
I see why your heart has hurt, and my back has hurt, too.
I see what it is now that drove me off the rails.
I see why my ears only hear sobs and wails.
I see why the pain in my life always prevails.
I see that this bed I have made is a bed of nails.
I have fallen from grace, the slowest in the race.
This bed I use is just a brace, a brace to fill the empty space.
This realization I have to face, I have no pain I have embraced.
So I let this pillow case become a hiding place.
But this bed is wrong.
This bed is deceiving.
This bed.
This bed.
The nails grow longer and longer, into my back.
They push themselves into my spine and forward into my heart and lungs and stomach.
This bed has me trapped, unable to move.
The nails have grown through me, binding me to this bed for all eternity.
This bed is pain.
This bed is suffering.
I try to cry out to you for help but I’m buried under the sheets.
What once was comforting is smothering me now.
Wake me up.
What once was welcoming is poisonous now.
Please.
Wake me up.
What once was my bed is now my coffin.
I’m begging you to please wake me up.
This bed.
Oh, this bed.
This bed is evil.