Valentine's Day Scribblings

My Valentine's Day present to JJ was a bag full of goodies that cannot be discussed on a family forum. The girls got bouquets of flowers from their daddy. And I got three hours to myself at a writing workshop featuring Kim Stafford.

I haven't been to a writing workshop in 25 years. That last time, I embarrassed myself so thoroughly with my own pomposity that I couldn't face doing another one and have actively avoided the teacher (a fairly prominent regional novelist) assiduously ever since.

One of the prompts was to write a love poem about the most beloved inanimate object in our houses. Since I have fibromyalgia, that would be my Tempurpedic bed, which I worship. Here is the poem:

Oh, bed. Oh, my bed.
In winter, you are comically hard when I first slip into you
Needing my heat to soften you to the point where you don't feel like a frozen board
Like I'm lying on the tundra, the permafrost
But oh, my bed
When you warm under my body, you mold around me and hold me up
All flannel and warmth, reflected back, my own warmth captured and transmitted into softness
And next to me, under the down and chenille
My boy, drowsy and moaning in his sleep
His mouth so soft and childlike and the little gray patch in his beard
I turn over on my side, careful of the box in my chest that keeps my heart from stopping
And you hold me up another night and let me sleep
Oh, my bed.

Happy Valentine's Day, y'all.