White Sheets

i never liked white sheets 

before

i thought they showed up

too many secrets - 

cat shit on the pillow

blood leaking out

from places it wasn’t supposed to

back then 

i always favoured psychedelic

headache prints

patterns to worry along to

with head nodding

dropping off into uneasy dreams

of a busy life

like the blue and pink 

flowers he ripped 

off sleeping 

me 

the last time he stayed over

mouth a 

big O 

and words

coming out

which usually didn’t

come out

usually so quiet

usually nicer not so 

rough not

like that

sit in bed on white sheets

now

better to know they’re not the same

and when there are stains

to wash them

and to sit quietly

with a careful selection

of songs in the background

thinking 

about the pieces of me that went with him

more than

a few books and a clock and

a banjo mandolin

i left my body too

in his mother’s house

he said

he’d never enjoyed having sex

with bleeding women

and i said o 

okay 

without the heart to tell him

everything that made me feel 

because he was mine

and i thought i could make him

good

he’d always been told

he was so good

and i regretted telling him

like the others

because we let him remember

what he wanted to

such a giver

total pleaser

nosing between another pair of legs

and liking the smell

actually

though he didn’t remember to check in on the girl 

who texted him in tears from London

after days of silence before a single message

made of mostly ampersands 

to tell him it was over because

she was never meant to be the other woman

that he’d made her become

but he did remember the first time

she saw his cock

and told him 

it was 

good

his chest puffed up for days

growing out of his clothes

hunched over laptop screens

fantasies of easy access

under summer dresses

memories which smell 

of patchouli in too-long hair

from when he stayed in my hometown

to tell me all about it

the way she squirmed

under

it had to have been 

so good

to be her

under his hands