there comes a point of sleeping on cheap cotton
smeared with pipe ash when your sheets pill
beyond recognition, satin turned to thread pebbles
scratching against cracked heels. you wake up at noon
on a thursday and catch a whiff of the oxidized fino
sherry on your nightstand and decide to drive north.
you listen to the rhythmic click of shopping cart
wheels pushed down fluorescent aisles done up in red
signage you’ve never actually read. your rituals always
bite their tails, swing back and forth like your hands flicked
a pendulum reaching for full-size sheets and driving
twenty minutes back south back to strip the mattress,
climbing in after a midnight bath with shaved legs
on crisp cloth and shoving the castoffs into that drawer.
there will come a day when you bring home another
new velvet quilt to lay over pilled sheets and unshaven
legs. you will open the drawer again and count five flats
and five fitteds and ten pillowcases. you will give
each set a name and feel yourself tangle and choke
in their aura. you will never buy patterned sheets again.
happy 1st birthday to you stupid slut! “depression sheets” is one of the first pieces i wrote for yss. it’s about how there was a period of my life where i was so depressed that the action of laundering my sheets became too much, so i’d just buy a new set when it came time to (finally) change them.
order a print copy of you stupid slut from my publisher, dream boy book club.