Bed's Too Big

No more boxes.

Pack the rest, disgusted, detritus, debris.

Toss it in a pillowcase, doesn’t matter anyway. 

A striped yellow and pink pillowcase. Hers.  

Stripes worn and faded, from the double bed. 

Before they upgraded to a king. 

A king size bed, so much more room.

Life was good.

And when life was not good? 

So much more room to hug the ends of the bed.

Avoid ‘accidentally’ touching each other. 

In a double bed, you always bump each other. 

Can’t go to sleep angry in a double bed.   

In a king, the hurts can lay there.

They lay there, right in the middle of the bed. 

The hurts send out suckers all night long,

Grow new branches, push the root systems deeper. 

How many piles on the floor?

Splitting a household is much tougher than merging. 

Merging was gradual, books, clothes, pots and pans. 

Separation sudden. Picking apart who got what?

Figuring out what gets kept, what gets sold?

They did not have the luxury of time for that, 

Each eager to have a new life. 

He looked at the pillowcases, her pillowcases

filled with the sheets and towels he was taking.

His new life wrapped in a bit of her old life. 

And no bed to put them on.

Rejected sheets, towels, clothes, sundries

heaps on the garage floor. 

He kicked them, then walked through the piles,

scattering them down the driveway.

Sometimes.  Just sometimes.  But sometimes

Love is not enough.