Artwork by Denise Xiao
(Context: “Luröy” is a set of wooden bed slats from IKEA, notorious for collapsing under the slightest shift of weight. There’s no way to properly secure these slats to a bedframe; you just have to keep re-aligning them each time they fall through the frame. I’ve been dealing with sleep issues because of this.)
My dearest dormouse,
I’d first like to apologize for my conduct. I’m sorry for twirling your spine around my finger, gifting you a flaccid neck instead of morning-wood musculature, and driving you to tears each time I fall through the frame. I get the sense you’re not accustomed to another’s repentance. But try as I might to console you, don’t expect things to change. I cannot grow roots to keep me put, nor treat the spaces between my slats as synapses. I envy my pine patriarch for this reason. He could sheath you in sap through the winter, render his needles reflexologists, maybe even open his heart up for your petrification. The rest you deserve is out of reach if I’m the only one around.
Your former lover seemed to struggle with finiteness too. We both tethered to ourselves, not the beds we laid on. I remember when she staked her claim on the side you sleep on, next to the nightstand with the Turkish lamp from Takoma Park and all your funny pills. Why say anything if she never tuned your love for a nocturne? Tread around the sweat in your sheets, make do with a silence you couldn’t sit in, try not to lose the rhythm of REM–all crumbling pillars of a relationship. You took your colonized side collapsing after she left as a sign from the universe. I meant it as an employment opportunity.
No matter how carefully you tried to realign me, I slipped again and again. You eventually resigned like a lab rat on reserpine, the left side of the bed a gestation period marked by twisted limbs and permafrost. But I had to madden you enough to make you enlist help.
The bunkie boards you and your best friend introduced me to were domineering, to say the least, thrusting me beneath the frame while simultaneously enrapturing the most hollow parts of myself. Within days, I watched your deep-set eyes dilate again, your cricks and contortions kick and stretch. That was how I knew my death was necessary for your rebirth.
Though my forefathers can no longer attend to you, remember the rings inside their trunks. Trace the etchings that once burned your digits off and let their subtle warmth welcome you. Revisit the fissures. Unlike me, you will grow around them. My marbling belongs to a moment deemed most profitable.
Until we meet again (if ever),
Lurӧy
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