Between the Sheets

They call it slipping between the sheets

A phrase which eases, slides

Like a knife between the envelope

-          The ink still dries.

-           

This is not it

For it occurs just like the alumni book

I’m slotted through, the slice

Of my smile within a photograph

Since being a child

A sob, sob, sob

Of kidishness within an adults voice

Indulged, within a culture coaxed

Of classical music, broadsheet, and glossy mags.

Adolescence gleans a greasy smoke

Which wagers paper wafer thin

I speak as if with impediment

Slipped into sheets just like a crease.

For propped and pinned I form a frame

About the paging of a skin

At one glance people see inheritance

On another, vanity

And another, sin.

Still between the sheets I slip

The sweat puddles and the body breaks

In its instinctive shriek for sleep

My mouth becomes  the title page.

It is not kissable or round

But an incision interrupting font

And so I slip between the sheets

And know what means to lie alone.

For others I have let turn on me

Others shred me down to size

Clutched guiltily under jackets, skirts

Like the child at the wedding throwing rice

There is eternal scattering

‘Recycling’  like my mother aid

The routine

That I live between the night

Like the sheet between the body and the bed.