Deathbed Sheets

By: Lindsay-Rose Dykema

It was just a (series of) misunderstanding(s)

starting with my saying let’s be mono --

a few months later I started flirting with someone

you labeled it ‘emotional affair’ but I just figured

I’d forgotten to add ‘for now.’

Is monogamy death or paying taxes?

(then you should have known it was only for now)

death, taxes, and the ennui

of never-ending Sisyphus laundry (you won’t be done with it

until you’re lying on your deathbed sheets)

and the greatest of these is lovers like leaves, lovers like these ones

meeting needs until one of them leaves

falling then floating, screaming then streaming

drifting apart no matter how tightly you squeeze

but should you sneeze --

My mother used to work nights;

as a child I deployed a (series of) antic(s), desperate stall tactic(s)

If you sneeze when you get there, God bless you, I once yelled

as her car pulled away and I waved goodbye.

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Lindsay-Rose Dykema, MD (she/her/hers) graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School in 2005 and com-pleted her residency training at Columbia University. She is a queer psychiatrist, prison/police abolitionist, and founder of Uncaged Minds, a mental health and wellness resource for low-resourced Detroiters with neurodivergent conditions and marginalized identities. Her work has been published in leftist and mental health journals, poetry anthologies, and Slate Magazine. She lives in Detroit.