two times

BAN BED BUGS

from occupying your mattress

you couldn't write shit like this,

the poster on the subway this morning says:

BAN BED BUGS!

from occupying your mattress!

I know protect-a-bed well, you see

but it's not the ad that made me trust them.

I am thinking of me hysterical in the dirty summer kitchen

and the fatherly man I paid

to tell me what to do.

he said "honey, protect-a-bed is the best" and I believed him because I had to.

to get out of this because,

fuck sustainability, fuck justice,

get those fuckers out of my house.

That fucking poster, the most blatent cooptation I could even...

how dare they just vacuum all the political out of those words?

that anyone would choose to use such a mockery aches me.

and then that it works. or that it is at least tolerated.

and occupy most of all! insult on injury, protect-a-bed, I believe in you!

There is a protect-a-bed encasement on my mattress

and I sleep there every night.

and some days I still thank it.

thank you, universe, for every day I don't have bedbugs. thanks again.

and how do I even overlap that moment I fear reliving on to this one I'm living now?

how much pain got piled up that summer.

waiting to break up with you until we'd hauled out all the sticky plastic bags.

and it was the hottest, dirties summer, and that day I just broke down sobbing in my room.

or which one? it got blurry. and it was so much more trite than this,

by miles.

it wasn't important enough for these coping skills to kick in.