Your mind goes, “mmmmmmmm” when you slide between smooth clean sheets for the first time.
“mmmmmmmmm.”
The bed is freshly made, correctly, and thus: a fitted sheet followed by a sheet, concluded with the usual filler blanket and the heavy quilt on top. The bed vibrated with mmmmm potential energy. The kind of energy that you instantly know will lend itself to a good nights sleep.
Sandwiched by high thread count, I felt content. My body filled the space between sheets with heat. The warm beige sheets rest on me, under me, above me, equally smothering and freeing. Frowningly, the quilt muscles its way into conscious thought, and I shift my weight to the left, to the right, testing the boundaries and establishing the perimeter; beyond which only lies the arctic, a wintry landscape of darkest night and cold limbs.
Lying still, to best occupy the island of warmth, my big toe rubs a staccato rhythm against the fabric, feeling each tiny groove in the cotton and marveling at how the whole thing hangs together, thousands and millions of threads, strings, atoms, particles, all in one place at the same time, for me, for the bed, for you. And it still holds, and will tomorrow and the next day, until the dark comes and unravels it.
