a city reader

BEFORE I GET THE PAPER

A woman 

wrote in a book

I read once

that making your

bed first thing

was good for you

in real important ways.

She said it

in a tone

that made me do it

through divorce 

and all the years of 

nights that followed

through nights of pints when

when you don’t 

remember

getting into that bed

through the restless sleep

of these 

endless days in isolation 

even with a trendy weighted blanket

on top of things

I make it obsessively

smoothing all the lumps 

even later if the

window light

says

I missed one.