is the only flag i love
when i was a child the post sorting office in our town had a giant flag on their flagpole and whenever we drove past it i would imagine my class lying underneath it arranged neatly around its perimeter as though it were a giant blanket. could it accommodate thirty two children? i thought so.
so, everyone i have ever slept beside: you, where we lay head to foot and whispered sleep on your side so you don’t choke if you puke, you who i asked one day i wonder if you lay on top of me would i be crushed and you did and we promptly fell asleep waking hours later but i was not crushed, not my body, anyway, you with your hands as small as mine who liked to say you could drive as aggressively as any man and you did, you stranger that one time on a mattress on the floor behind a hotel front desk, you who as babies would only nap beside me and we would wake at the same time looking into each others eyes and i thought that was a kind of magic, you who wrote to me late into the night words which appeared on a screen and which i read until my eyes just couldn’t anymore and wasn’t that a kind of sleeping beside if at a distance? i thought so, all you others, all of you, come and lie under this blanket and let me tuck you in, let me kiss you for the first or the last time and let us sleep.