Poem: The Spring Of Things

The man—the salesman—at the mattress store was beautiful. And very loved. But he loved only mattresses, their beautiful contusions, their floral sighs as bodies broke them in on winter nights. Or maybe he loved them for how they made him fall in love with people—the joker gone quiet as he closed his eyes, the waitress who vowed she’d “never get off.” His lover, however, never quite got it. She bragged whenever she got the chance of how she could sleep “anywhere.” She dared the man to nap upon her newly vacuumed rug. “Here’s your chance,” she mouthed across the candle-scented air. There were flowers at his door and a hornet on his sleeve, but still the song of coiled springs was all that he could process. Passion begins with dread, he said, to whomever stopped to listen. The coward hour his lover left, his bedroom started sinking. Every door in the house awoke and swam itself ajar. And the man, our friend, who was once so loved, and his new, capacious mattress? He has dried his face, put on his clothes, replaced the damaged flatsheet. He has left his bed for the grace of the sale, the simple sound of staying awake, aware of the beautiful denseness beneath. 

Photo by Attilio D'Agostino