What the Mattress Was Keeping

The receipt had gone soft as old skin.

A hair tie, not mine, wound tight as a fist.

The pen still capped. The particular grin

of objects that stay where they're missed.

I didn't know I'd moved the bed.

Or maybe I knew and forgot that too.

The note came last — folded, face-down, dead

against the baseboard and the gray residue

of two years' worth of what I didn't sweep.

I turned it over. Handwriting, mine.

The words belonged to someone trying to keep

themselves upright along some other line.

I don't remember writing it.

I don't remember being that afraid.

The mattress is back. The note I split

in half and held above the trash. And stayed.