My Bed Covers Are Cream

and I owe you nothing.

My bed covers are cream. I tell you this not because I want you to imagine yourself between my bed sheets. Do not think a woman owes you the privilege of seeing between the covers of her bed. Do not think you rightfully belong between the covers of a woman's bed. My bed covers are cream. The same colour as the sea foam. That light butter yellow, egg whites whipped to form stiff peaks, the cream of Poet's narcissus. My bed covers are cream. They are the same colour as sea foam. The sea foam that weeps on the sand when it is left to watch the waves pull themselves back into the vast abyss of the ocean. The sea foam that blows in the wind across the beach, left clinging to rocks, left praying to soon reach the soft curve of the currents. My bed covers are cream like hands clasped together in prayer because my bed is a sacred place. My bed has felt every curve of my body.

Nothing, nothing has held me like this bed. This temple between ceiling and floor. This bed perfectly placed within the smallest part of my bedroom. Framed in a rectangle like a nave. This is my religious painting. This bed is my religious painting. There is nothing more sacred than a bed in a bedroom. My bed covers are cream like hands clasped in prayer because my sleeping body is my prayer, and even on nights when i do not sleep, moreover I cannot sleep, and my mind wanders down treacherous paths, one tells me I am not breathing, that the room is spinning, do you know you are dying, and another tells me gently to close my eyes like I did only the night before and let myself be seduced by Hypnos, Hypnos that stranger of a lover that I have always had a complex relationship with, another tells me to lay and watch the light slowly dawn on the ceiling. My bed covers are cream like hands clasped in prayer because my sleeping body is my prayer, and even on nights when I do not sleep, moreover I cannot sleep, my bed is still the one to hold me throughout the night. My bed covers are cream like freshly made almond milk, almond milk made in the kitchen down the hallway. Cream like freshly made almond milk with vanilla added. The pulp of the almonds. An almond half bitten- observe inside- here I find my bed. Cream like almond milk. My bed covers are cream. I tell you this not because I want you to imagine yourself between my bed covers. Do not think a woman owes you the privilege of seeing between the covers of her bed. Do not think you rightfully belong between the covers of a woman's bed. My bed covers are cream. I do not tell you this because I want you between my bed sheets, and even if I invited you in, I would not owe you anything. My bed covers are cream and even if I invited you between my bed covers fully naked I still would not owe you anything. My bed covers are cream because cream is a colour that will stain if anything is ever knocked over. Not spilled. Because spilling something is almost always an accident. My bed covers are cream; I will always keep them a light colour, because cream is a colour that will stain if anything is ever knocked over.